A Song of Steel and Lies
by reegreeg
Summary: [Ninja school AU.] Tenten Zhang, Ino Yamanaka, Neji Hyūga, and Sasuke Uchiha have been deemed the best ninja in their grade and are up against elite ninja from all around the globe in a massive competition to see which ninja academy is the best. But they also have to finish their homework.
1. I

**A/N: WAHOODLYDOODLYDOOO! I'm finally starting mah Naruto fic, y'all!**

**Oh, I suppose I should introduce myself. Hi. I'm Regan. Nobody exciting—but I'm a decent writer. Maybe. Not really. Wrote a NejiTen one-shot, so I'm not entirely new to the community. Like pretty much everyone I do not, in fact, own Naruto.**

**Warning 1: This is my first chapter and the first part and blah blah blah, so it will suck. Also this thing'll prolly be quite slow in the beginning but I'm twelve, so cut me some slack, mmmkay?**

**Warning 2: I will cuss in this. Not all the time, but I will.**

**Warning 3: So I'm betting you all read the summary and saw the word "school" and either chose to flame it or hit it with a stick because school AUs either suck or rock in your heads, but it's not a _normal_ school AU, it's a _ninja_ school AU, with each of the hidden villages being a ninja school or something. Yarp. (I am so not creative. Kill me now.)**

**Crap, this A/N is crazy long. On with the story!**

* * *

**PART ONE**

**HURRICANE**

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."  
― _Eleanor Roosevelt_

* * *

_Oh gods, _she thought, _no._

The blonde in the doorway gave her a brilliant smile. "Hi!" she chirped. "I'm Ino! Ino Yamanaka! You've probably heard of me. After all, I'm incredibly fabulous."

Tenten shook her head. "Nope. This is the first time I've ever heard of an Ino Yamanaka."

"Shut up," said Ino Yamanaka. "No way!" She paused and brushed a strand of her long hair out of her face. "Well, whatever. I'm sure we'll get along anyway. I can take it from here, Anko-sensei." The last part was directed towards Tenten's escort, who seemed more than happy to shove Tenten into her new room and shut the door behind her.

The two girls stared at the door for a while. The atmosphere was filled with awkward tension and screaming silence, and Tenten felt rather nervous. It was bad enough that it was her first day at a new school, as an official ninja—now she was rooming with a girl who the universe apparently loved so much she got to be über-pretty, über-seemingly-confident, and probably über-epic-in-other-ways as well.

_Shut up, brain, _Tenten chided herself. _First impressions are always wrong. Let's not be mean._

It looked as though Ino Yamanaka had the same train of thought, and she gave the brunette another smile. "Hi. Um...what did you say your name was again?"

"I didn't. It's Tenten, by the way."

"Well, Tenten," she said, throwing open the doors and gesturing dramatically at the hallway, "welcome to the Konoha Institute for Gifted Ninjas! Also known as hell, just between you and me. Emphasis on just between you and me." She grabbed Tenten's hand and skipped out the door, giving her a detailed explanation on what lay beyond each one. "That one's Kin's. I don't know her deal. That one's Sakura's and Hinata's. Never enter it, no matter what they offer you. Never linger outside it for more than ten seconds. Crap, it's been, like, eleven! Run!" They ran for a grand total of seven yards until they stopped at another door, which was deemed unimportant, and actually probably empty, since Ino had never seen anyone open it, so it was probably a gang hideout or maybe a portal to another world.

They breezed past most of the boy dormitories, as Ino didn't seem to find any of the inhabitants "hot enough." However, the two of them stopped one door at the end of the hall. The only remotely interesting thing about it was the ramen coupon taped to the doorknob. Tenten wondered if Ino really liked ramen or something.

"Stop right there," ordered Ino in a faint whisper. Tenten watched as the blonde pressed her ear to the door and listened for a moment, then dropped into a low plank to peer into the room via the gap between the door and the floor.

"Anything interesting?" asked Tenten, kneeling down beside her roommate.

"Nada," sighed Ino. "Only Naruto." The two got to their feet and Ino said, "Well, those are the dorms. Exciting, aren't they? Don't answer that, because the answer is no. Anyway, we've got assembly in five, so I don't know what else I can show you in that time..."

"I suppose we could always just go down early, get good seats," Tenten suggested.

"Mm, I suppose you're right. You're a smart cookie, Miss Tenten." Ino turned towards the brunette and arched one of her perfect eyebrows. "I'd better watch out for you."

* * *

The assembly was apparently going to be held in the auditorium, just like it always was at Tenten's old school. The similarities stopped there, though, mostly due to size and fanciness—but there was also a huge difference in atmosphere and people and such. Nearly everyone Tenten saw had an air of harsh confidence and determination, like they were so awesome, they'd taken all the crap the world gave them and didn't care; they could do anything.

Tenten wasn't like that.

"Hey, pig!" called a taunting, female voice.

Ino rolled her eyes and groaned. "Not this again." She turned towards the speaker's seat. "Hi, Billboard Brow," she jeered, placing her hands on her hips. "How's it going?"

The speaker, a pretty, pink-haired girl with lovely green eyes and a wide forehead (though Tenten thought it suited her just fine), stood up and glared at Ino. "Great, you...you slutty idiotic _floozie_."

"Geez, Sakura, I bet I could eat a can of alphabet soup and crap out a better comeback than the one you just came up with."

"If I'm that dumb, why are you talking to me?" Sakura pouted mockingly. "Does widdle baby Ino-chan need some fashion advice? Actually, I can't blame you, Little Miss Anorexic Air-headed Barbie Doll."

"I'd rather look like a Barbie than _you_," said Ino, giving Sakura her brilliant smile, flashing her pearly whites almost menacingly. "Honestly, who'd take fashion advice from a _boy_?"

Sakura's jaw dropped and Ino grabbed Tenten's wrist, pulling her down the aisle. "Run!" she giggled.

The blonde stopped abruptly by the fifth row from the stage. "Okay," she told Tenten, "now play cool." Ino strode calmly towards a seat next to a bored-looking raven-haired boy and plopped down next to him. "Hi, Sasuke-kun," she said coolly, examining her nails.

"Hey, Ino."

Ino whipped her head towards Tenten and did a little victory dance. "Squee!" she mouthed.

Tenten shuffled after Ino and smoothed out her blouse. "What was that all about?"

"That's Sasuke Uchiha. He's the boy I was looking for earlier," whispered Ino in Tenten's ear. "He's super hot. Like, seriously. _Super hot_."

"I see."

Suddenly a stabbing pain shot through her left foot. She swore she heard something go "crunch," and she jerked her foot up to her lap, where she cradled her injured toes.

"Oh, I apologize," said a baritone male voice.

"That's fine," said Tenten quickly. "It was an accident."

She had eye contact with the speaker for a moment and took the opportunity to size him up. Boredom was written all over his artfully sculpted face, though there were all kinds of emotions swirling around in his pale lilac eyes. He also had longer hair than Tenten, and it was thick and shiny and the perfect shade of ebony that Tenten always wished her hair was. She felt her face grow hot and averted her eyes.

As discreetly as possible, Tenten leaned towards Ino. "Who's that?" she hissed.

Ino craned her neck and giggled when she saw the offender. "Ooh, do you like him?"

"No! I just wanna know who stepped on my foot. That's all."

"You so like him," whispered Ino. "Heh. You've got your work cut out for you. That's Neji Hyūga." She paused, like the name should have meant something to Tenten. "Um...he's..well, I don't know much else about him, except for that he's one of the best shinobi in our grade and he's really angry at his family or something."

"Hmm."

They all sat in silence for a few minutes, with the exception of Ino, who was constantly turning around in her creaky seat and "nanny nanny boo boo"-ing at Sakura, who "nanny nanny boo boo"-ed right back. More and more kids filed into the auditorium until it got so crowded that Tenten couldn't see the stage anymore.

Finally an elderly man in long white robes stepped gingerly on to the stage and tapped the microphone. "Welcome," he said in a raspy voice, "and a warm hello to all the shinobi and kunoichi here today on the first official day of the Konoha Institute's school year. I am Hiruzen Sarutobi, the principal of this school, and before we go through the rules and pledge our allegiance and such I'd like to make a few announcements.

"One. Due to many complaints, especially from our first years, we have installed new toilets in the second floor's girls' bathroom.

"Two. Students are absolutely forbidden to enter Room 230 on the second floor. And none of you will get an explanation, so there's no point in asking."

At this the room erupted in chatter; only when Principal Sarutobi screamed "SILENCE!" at the top of his lungs (after many not-so-subtle throat-clearings) did everyone (for the most part) quiet down.

"Now, as I was saying, number three. For the first time in history, we have accepted a new student who has completed part of her education elsewhere, thus beginning in our third year class. Miss Tenten Zhang, please stand up."

Tenten's Neji Hyūga-induced blush grew even more furious as she rose, feeling all eyes on her. She tried to stand tall and shrink into the woodwork at the same time, resulting in what Tenten was certain was the dumbest, most constipated-looking pose she'd ever made (though really just made her look like she had good posture while slouching her shoulders). "Hi," she said in a small voice, and promptly sat back down.

"And finally, announcement number four," said Hiruzen Sarutobi, smiling slightly. "I have been talking with the principals of a few other ninja schools, and we have decided to organize a tournament." The chatter bubbled up again, and this time Sarutobi did nothing to shut the young ninja up. "We have decided that each school participating will the four most gifted third years they have-"

A groan arose from almost the entire audience. "Why only the third years?" yelled someone.

"Yeah," added another, "that's hardly fair! Besides, fifth years are better."

"No, seventh years are!"

"Fourth years!"

"_First years_!"

"SILENCE!" boomed Sarutobi again. "We have chosen third years to participate in the tournament because this is when all their hidden talents and such really begin to blossom; this is when they all really start growing up. So for the next month, all third years will be undergoing various tests instead of normal education, until the end of the month, when the two best-scoring kunoichi and shinobi will be grouped into a team, the other schools and their teams come over, and the games begin.

"Otherwise, things will be normal. Third years will continue to train in the teams they were put into during their first year and after the testing, they will attend class just like everyone else. First and second years are prohibited from visiting certain places, such as the armory, themselves, sixth years get access to the ultra-dangerous greenhouses, fourth years will receive the option of attending courses on torture and interrogation..."

And so he went on, but the last words that had registered in Tenten's brain were the ones about the competition.

"You heard him, right?" whispered Ino. "The two best-scoring kunoichi. That's gonna be you and I, sister."

"Yep," replied Tenten, "and we're gonna own this thing."

* * *

**A/N: Super short chapa, I'm sorry. I'm bad at longer ones uwu;**

**Well, I'll try to make future ones longer.**

**Okay, so who there got my not-so-subtle GOT, HOO, and HP...uh..._references_? Everyone? That's nice.**

**Anyway, a little PSA (Public Shipping Announcement) before I leave. I'm not gonna announce who ends up together at the end before I have a few readers who I'm pretty sure won't desert me (haha I suck I know) but I can say this much: even if you don't like that pairing, I'll be sure to include as many as possible, so there's always a chance you will find one you like. So let's say you're a huge...LeeSaku shipper, right? And then Sakura ends up with...uh...Sai. Then you'll prolly be able to just go back to chapter 12 and hug the LeeSaku moment or whatever.**

**Yarp, so I don't end up with A/Ns longer than the chapter, Imma end this now. Review, please! **


	2. II

**A/N: Chapter two! I'm on a roll!**

**Cough cough. I'm cheating and doing a little tiny timeskip so I can get this show on the road.**

**Oh my goodness, I got a review on the first day this was up, so Imma reply to it (again) and...**

**Anniiee: THANK YOU SO MUCH for liking it, and here's your update!**

**Aight, Naruto ain't mine. Deal with it.**

* * *

Sasuke wiggled his pencil back and forth in what he hoped looked like a gesture of concentration. It probably didn't.

For the umpteenth time, he reread the question. _Who was the first human to be born with chakra?_

He knew this. He knew he did! It was literally the first sentence in his "History of Ninjutsu" textbook, the one he'd spent all month reading until he practically knew it by heart.

Which apparently wasn't good enough.

The thing was, though, he _needed_ it to be good enough. He needed to get on that team and beat new people so he'd become strong enough to get revenge. And he'd never make it without passing the test.

Sasuke placed his head in his hands and groaned softly. He'd have to take desperate measures in these desperate times.

Ino was sitting in the desk directly to his left, her eyes moving quickly across her stack of papers. She was clearly already done. Sasuke loathed cheating, but he knew Ino would help him, and her answers were undoubtedly all a hundred percent correct. So he leaned over and hissed, "Ino!"

She stiffened and dropped her test on to her desk, where it landed with a muffled "thunk." "What is it, Sasuke?"

He looked around and opened his mouth, but couldn't bring himself to voice the question. Instead, he tore a corner off one of his spare papers, scribbled, _Can you help me? _and tossed it to Ino.

She pursed her lips as she squinted at the note and wrote a terse reply in her cramped handwriting: _What's in it for me?_

_I'll pay you back?_

Ino twisted her finger in her cheek, gnawing the nails of her free hand. "Fine," she muttered. Sasuke shot her a grateful look, and she made a few discreet hand seals under her desk. "_Ninpou–Shintenshin no Jutsu_!"

She collapsed and Sasuke could feel a new life force entering his body, pushing his own aside. Ino-Sasuke feigned inspiration and scribbled away, jotting down Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki's entire life story in a slightly sloppy copy of the Uchiha's handwriting. The teacher at the head of the room raised his eyebrows at the unconscious Ino, but said nothing.

Finally she finished, and practically threw the pencil down. With a great deal of squirming, the blonde released her hold on Sasuke and woke up in her real body with a jolt, which knocked her desk over.

"Oopsy daisy," she giggled weakly, her face redder than Sakura's dress.

"Miss Yamanaka, what exactly was that all about?" asked the teacher coldly.

"Just waking up, that's all. I didn't get much sleep yesterday. I was...um..."

"Studying," Tenten supplied from the front of the room. "And cussing about it. All night."

"On the bright side," said Ino, "I'm all done!"

"As am I," added Sasuke, and the two strode to the front of the room to hand in their tests.

"You're excused, then, Miss Yamanaka, Mr. Uchiha." Sasuke scrambled for the door, flinging it open, barely remembering to hold it for Ino in his haste to exit the classroom.

"Thank you," said Sasuke as soon as they were out of earshot.

Ino turned on her heel and began walking down the hall. "Don't mention it," she called over her shoulder. "It was nothing."

"Seriously." Sasuke jogged up her and took her small hands in his, looking her squarely in the eye. "_Thank you_. It means a lot; I definitely owe you."

Her face flushed again, and she jerked her hands away. "Fine," she replied, "you're very welcome, Sasuke." She began walking down the hall again, but stopped. "I'm holding you to that, by the way. You _do _owe me."

Shaking his head at her retreating figure, he thought, _What the hell did I just get myself into?_

He couldn't come up with an answer.

* * *

"Tenten Zhang, you will not believe this."

"Oh?" Tenten walked into the dorm and sat down next to Ino on the floor. "What won't I believe?"

"Okay. So you know that test we just had?"

"Um...yeah?"

Ino's smile grew so wide Tenten thought her face might split in two. "Sasuke asked me to help him! And then he thanked me twice! And he held my hands! _And he said he owes me_!"

"Omigosh!" Since her enrollment at the Institute, Tenten had learned exactly how much the Uchiha meant to her friend, and understood that this was, like, a major thing. "No way!"

"Yes way!" Ino beamed even wider, which Tenten didn't even believe was possible, and started jumping on her bed. "THIS DAY IS MADE OF AWESOME!"

"You know what'll be even more awesome?" Tenten grinned slyly and began bouncing alongside her roommate. "When we both make the team. With Sasuke."

"And Neji," said Ino.

"Ino! You know I don't like him!"

"You totally do!"

"Nuh-uh."

"Oh, don't start this again, Ten. I know the truth. You're in denial-"

"Am not!"

"-and that's the first stage of love, blah blah blah. Point is, life is great, I love the world, and I cannot wait for the results, which will be announced in..." Ino glanced at the clock. "Eight minutes."

Tenten smiled and turned away. Ino had once again found a way to make her head an annoying whirlwind of thought, most of them about a certain Hyūga boy who just so happened to sit next to her in nearly every class and just so happened to make her heart skip a bit every now and then. But that happened all the time for people...right? Or maybe she was developing a heart murmur. Her aunt had a heart murmur, so maybe they were hereditary.

And before she knew it, eight minutes had passed, and she and Ino were running like madwomen down the corridors, trying to get to the auditorium on time (because Tenten would be mortified if they were late for the announcement of their making the team–like, how bad would that make them look?). They bumped into Neji on the way, who looked rather cute when he was freaking out, in Tenten's opinion (which she would never, ever voice).

The third years were the only ones attending the reading of the results, so only the first row of seats in the right-hand aisle were filled. Ino was once again sitting next to Sasuke, who seemed to be avoiding eye contact with her, so Tenten made small talk with her and Neji.

Sarutobi wasn't going to be announcing the team; apparently it was to be a sensei named Kakashi. Tenten knew nothing about him, except for the fact that he was several minutes late.

"Does this mean we didn't have to run like crazy?" whispered Tenten to Neji.

"Does this mean I would've had time to fix my hair? Yes, yes it does."

"Hmm."

Eventually, after what felt like hours of waiting, a white-haired man with most of his face covered by the material of his shirt and various bandanas stepped on to the stage with his nose in a book Tenten knew he shouldn't have been reading in front of minors. He did not acknowledge the students in any way, nor did he announce his presence in any way, just kept on reading. Tenten disliked him immediately.

"KAKASHI-SENSEI!" yelled Naruto, the hyperactive blonde who (from what Tenten gathered) had an IQ of maybe zero and absolutely no talent, to boot. "WHERE IN THE WORLD HAVE YOU BEEN!? WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR HOURS, RIGHT, SAKURA-CHAN?"

Sakura slapped Naruto. "Sit down, baka," she grumbled.

"Sakura's right, Naruto," said Kakashi. "Sit down and we'll get this started."

Tenten raised her hand. "Excuse me, sir, but shouldn't you stop reading if we're going to 'get this started'?"

Kakashi eyed the book in his hands and stared at Tenten for a moment. "Why, yes. You're...right," he said stiffly. "Now, I have the list of names somewhere..." He pulled a folded sheet of looseleaf out of his pocket, unfolded it, and started reading it slowly to himself. Tenten stiffened, Ino and Neji leaned forward in their seats, Sakura actually stood up, like she was ready to accept her award at any given time, and Sasuke couldn't stop smiling, which Tenten didn't think she'd ever seen him do. "If I call your name, please get your butt on the stage. We'll begin with the boys," said Kakashi. "Neji Hyūga."

Neji shot Tenten a small smile and walked confidently to the stage, relishing in the applause he received.

"Sasuke Uchiha."

Sasuke's smile became smug and he walked to the stage with his head held high. Ino, Sakura, and a few other girls went crazy, screaming and whistling and stomping their feet, which Sasuke ignored entirely.

"And now for the two lucky kunoichi. Ino Yamanaka!"

"...What?" asked Sakura and Ino at the same time.

"Ino Yamanaka. Did I stutter?"

"There must be some kind of mistake," spluttered Sakura. "She is _not_ smarter than me!"

Kakashi rolled the eye he had visible. "Well, apparently she is."

Ino's hands flew to her mouth and her face lit up. "SUCKER!" she yelled at the pink-ette. "Sucker, sucker, sucker, sucker, _sucker_!"

Then Ino went out of her way to kiss every clapping ninja-in-training on the cheek as she twirled towards the stage. She kissed Sasuke on the cheek, too, which caused them both to blush furiously and look rather confused.

"And finally..." All the remaining girls leaned all the way forwards in their seats, and Tenten could tell that underneath the mask, Kakashi was grinning. "Tenten Zhang."

The brunette certainly did not expect that turn of events, so it wasn't surprising to the still-functioning part of her that she nearly fell over as she uncertainly stood up. Each step she took was shaky and her vision was blurry; all the noise in the room seemed tinny and far away. She heard Ino cheering but that was really it, most people were complaining.

"Why is it her? She's only been here a month!" demanded Kiba Inuzuka, his dog Akamaru barking his doggy complaints right beside his master. A ripple of whispered agreements passed over the class, and after that everything was silent.

"Yay, Tenten!" called Hinata after a while. Tenten's vision cleared, and she saw that Neji's timid cousin had actually stood up and was waving her arms around. "Woohoo! You made it!"

Sakura elbowed her friend. "What are you doing?"

Hinata brought her arms down and wrapped them around herself. "I just...think that she earned it. Nobody should treat her any different just because she's new, right? If she scored better than we did, she scored better than we did, and that's that."

Ino slid off the stage. "What's with _her_ sudden character change?" whispered the blonde in Tenten's ear.

"I don't know," replied Tenten. "I'm not even sure that was a change of character—I've, like, never spoken to her."

Ino grunted. "Totally a change of character. Believe me, she's a demon."

Naruto walked up to Hinata and attempted to compliment her, though she fainted dead away before he'd formed a complete sentence. But the Hyūga girl's words had an effect on the third years anyway, and after a minute even Kiba was reluctantly clapping.

"So, congratulations, you four," said Kakashi and pulled out his book again. "Good job and such. Aight, y'all have all got free period until the students from Kumo and Suna arrive. Team Konoha, or whatever you want to be called, I'd recommend all getting to know each other. You're up against some tough competition." With that, he left, and the third years began to disperse as well.

Tenten watched them leave and then looked around at her team, her face breaking into a smile. "Did we all just..."

"Yeah," said Neji with a faraway look in his pale eyes. "And we are all kinda cool."

* * *

Ino left the auditorium first out of Team Konoha. Sasuke was deliberately ignoring her, which made no sense after the events of the morning. She was trying not to let it rain on her parade, but didn't feel like she was doing a very good job.

So she walked down the corridors of the fifth floor in silence, stopping every once in a while to tear apart the odd dead leaf that had tumbled in through the window.

"Hey, Ino."

"Huh?" She whirled around, half-expecting Sasuke, but instead seeing Shikamaru walking towards her surprisingly quickly. "Oh, hi, Shika-kun. Wassup?"

His face went slightly red. "Um...I...oh, I can't say it. Never mind, it's too troublesome."

"C'mon, Shika, can't you tell me?"

He buried his face in his hands and sighed. "Fine. Let's put it this way—Ino Yamanaka, will you go out with me?"

* * *

Neji sat by the window in his dorm, staring at the road. He knew that the Suna and Kumo students weren't due for ages, but he figured they could come early or something.

Besides, he needed something to distract him from Tenten Zhang and her cute little hair buns and her warm amber eyes and her faintly freckled nose which infuriated him a great deal (because honestly, it was just such a pretty little nose).

Of course, he didn't _like_ her. She was just cute. And scarily brilliant with every weapon in existence. And one of the few people he was sure he cared about. But those things were trivial.

He got up and headed towards the door, deciding a good workout would get his mind off things. If anything, he'd bump into Lee, and then he'd be so caught up in shutting Konoha's Youthful Green Beast (or whatever he called himself) up that all his troubles would practically fly out the window.

He rubbed his curse mark and knew that his problems and thoughts would never really disappear; he knew he was kidding himself, building up false hopes that would just come crashing down around him next time...whatever happened. He saw Hinata or Tenten or Lee or someone. Or someone made another comment about how it was "unfair he was so naturally talented" or how he was "just as amazing as his dad." Even if it was destiny, he was sick of it all.

But a workout would be good anyway.

* * *

"Sure," said Ino, half uncertain and half confused. "As friends, right?"

Shikamaru grimaced ever so slightly but recomposed himself, giving Ino a small nod. "Yeah. As friends. Totally."

She stared at her long-time friend for a minute, biting her lip, but smiled and started walking again. "I'll see you later, then. Or something?"

"Or something." Ino could feel Shikamaru staring at her as she continued down the hall, and when he thought she was out of earshot, she heard him mutter, "Girls are troublesome."

_Not half as much as boys, buddy, _she thought, but had the manners to keep it to herself.

* * *

**A/N: Woot woot, all done! Sorry about the lack of action, but that will come, I promise. Remember, it'll be slow in the beginning? Maybe I'll work a fight into chapa 3, who knows! (And it's still short. Gah.)**

**Also, for all of you ShikaIno shippers, it is your time to shine/review. It actually plays an important part in the plot and isn't just for the sake of your feels, but y'all can pretend.**

**Please review, it really means a lot to me!**

**P.S.: Updates are gonna be weird, I'm warning y'all now. So don't get your hopes up, thinking I'm an awesome writer who updates every day or something, because I'm not. I'll do my best, though! (Which might be terrible!) Bye bye, and have fun clicking the "review" button and leaving a lovely little comment!**


	3. III

**A/N: Well, what do we have here? A chappie? NO WAY.**

**And now, time for my answers to your lovely, lovely reviews!**

**FruitySmell (omigod): Yep, that was the idea! And it was almost like my little memorial to Dumbledore. Kinda. I ****_so_**** wish he was alive...*sobs* (almost as much as I wish Neji was alive. *sobs harder*) Neji's cute, you say? Haha. Yeah, you have fun pinching his cheeks. He'll love it. (I'll make sure I'm not in the room for that) Anyway, thank you for the review!**

**sumtyms: Thanks for reviewing, and you're welcome!**

**Purpleprincess1147: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. For reviewing, for following, for liking the story...*hugs* YOU ARE EPIC.**

**People who actually read this bit, if Naruto belonged to me, I wouldn't need to write fanfictions, now, would I?**

* * *

"Tenten Zhang, you will not believe this, either."

"What won't I believe this time?"

Ino flopped backwards onto her bed, hit her head (and didn't care), and groaned. "I just went out with Shikamaru Nara."

"What!?"

"Uh-huh." Ino beckoned her friend closer, so she wouldn't have to speak up–she was too confused. "And..." She did her best to hide the worry in her voice, but failed. "I liked it. I mean, it was dinner, and I like food when I'm not dieting, so _obviously _I had a good time, but...he was...well, sweet. Lazy, as usual, and I had to order and stuff, but he's actually really nice. In a...non-friendly way?" She looked up at her friend helplessly. "Am I rambling?"

"Yes."

"Go get the ice cream, will you?"

Tenten's eyes widened. "Where the hell did you get ice cream?"

"Please," scoffed Ino, "nobody'd stay remotely sane in this place without regular consumption of things that are forbidden, unhealthy, and happy-making. Actually, ice cream's prolly the least dangerous thing I keep in that fridge. Now, get the medium-sized tub of Cookies 'n' Cream, and two spoons, if you will."

"What about bowls?"

"No bowls. Actually, I changed my mind. Get the extra-large tub." She watched the brunette walk off, and as an afterthought, added, "Don't mind the mysterious unmarked bottles, they're from the homemade poisons course I took last year."

She didn't think Tenten believed her, but she didn't think Tenten would hold it against her, either. Ino gave her friend a mumbled "Thankies" when she returned and began to hit the lid of the tub with her spoon repeatedly. "It helps it thaw," Ino explained. "I think."

Tenten took Ino's spoon out of her hands and crossed her arms. "Shikamaru Nara," she said. "_Shikamaru Nara_."

"We've been friends since were five," said Ino in a weak attempt to explain.

"But what about Sasuke!?" demanded Tenten. "Who you're madly in love with!?"

"I-"

"Okay, never mind that. Did you ask him or did he ask you?"

"He asked me-"

"And why did you say yes?"

"Because we've been friends since we were five." Ino snatched her spoon away from Tenten, pried the lid off the ice cream, and took a large spoonful. "Nom. And what was I gonna do, say no?"

Tenten snorted. "Knowing you...um, yeah?"

"Why would I do that? Ten, that'd be mean. I'm not mean. Usually." Ino frowned and took another spoonful of ice cream. "But...oh, screw it. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life anymore."

"Is life still great, though?"

"Nope." She threw her spoon down into the nearly empty ice cream tub, placing a finger on it to stop its clattering. "Maybe. I don't know. Shall we go meet us some foreign ninjas?"

"What, are they here?"

Ino stood up and threw open the door, the sound of shouting in several different languages drifting into the dorm and shaking the furniture. "I think so."

* * *

Sasuke thought he was doing fine in the fight until she took out her giant iron war fan.

Then he was pretty sure he was screwed.

"I'm giving you one last chance, pretty boy," said the angry blonde from Suna. "What did you say about my brother?"

Sasuke pressed his hands to his eyes, which were beginning to ache from _sharingan _overuse. "I told you, I didn't say anything!"

"Fine, then what did your equally pretty boyfriend say?"

"Who, _Neji_? A, he's not my boyfriend, and B, he didn't say anything, either!"

The blonde opened up her fan and swung it towards Sasuke like a scythe; the wind blowing in through the windows kicked up and a raging cyclone spun towards Sasuke, knocking him off his feet. "So who did?" demanded the girl. "Speak up, sweetie, I wanna make sure everybody hears the name of the poor bastard who insulted Gaara. 'Cause he is going _down_."

Sasuke stood up and chucked a shuriken towards her (which she easily batted aside). "Fine," he said through gritted teeth, "I give up. I called your brother a freakshow-"

"I KNEW IT!" The blonde bit her thumb and wiped the blood on her fan. "_Kuchiyose: Kirikiri Mai_!"

The cyclone got stronger and an oversized white weasel wearing an eyepatch spun into existence, clutching a sickle in its paws. The wind ripped doors off their hinges and knocked chairs back into the walls. The Konoha students were falling over left and right, though the team from Suna seemed completely unfazed.

"-_but I didn't mean it!_" yelled Sasuke, struggling to be heard over the wind.

"I don't care," scoffed the Suna girl, and closed her fan, raising it like a hammer. "Nobody calls my brother a freakshow and gets away with it."

"Well then, nobody sets their psychotic ferrets against my teammate and gets away with it, either."

"_Tenten_?"

Temari, her teammates, and Sasuke all turned to the staircase, where Tenten and Ino stood with their hands on their hips and no-nonsense expressions on their faces. Tenten strode towards the two and stood between them, glaring at the blonde.

"Though, really, miss...?"

"Temari," spat the blonde.

"Miss Temari. You're overreacting a bit, aren't you?"

Temari gripped her fan tighter. "Am not. You have no idea what my brother's been through, or...hell, do you even know what's going on?"

"It'd be hard not to," said Ino dryly, walking over to stand behind Temari.

Tenten took two summoning scrolls out of her pocket and placed them on the floor, then stared at Temari through narrowed eyes. "Now," she said, "I really don't want to do this, but your behavior is really kinda uncalled for."

The scrolls rolled open and smoke began to rise from them, coiling into the shape of twin dragons as they floated upwards. Tenten's eyes closed in concentration and she made several lightning-fast hand seals, which made the air around her feel electrically charged, while Temari stood still, looking unimpressed.

"_Sōshōryū_!"

Tenten and her scrolls started spinning into the air and she summoned weapon after weapon after weapon, which all came raining down towards Temari.

"Did you know she could do this?" Sasuke asked Ino.

"No," replied the friendlier blonde breathlessly. "She's really something, isn't she?"

Temari, however, clearly did not think so. She looked at her closed fan in annoyance, yanked it open again, and then raised an eyebrow at the weapons, blocking each and every one with a gust of wind from her fan. "_Fūton: Tatsu no Ōshigoto_!" she yelled during a brief pause between waves of weapons, and her biggest cyclone yet descended upon Tenten and knocked her out of the air. Temari snapped her fan shut and held it out to catch the brunette kunoichi, who landed on it with a sickening crunch.

"Well, that wasn't much of a match," said Temari. "Kinda boring."

Her teammates snickered as Temari tossed Tenten aside and Neji (who Sasuke wished he hadn't told to "Stay outta it") lunged to catch her.

"Alright, Tema-chan, let's get going," said the other Team Suna girl eventually. "We've gotten us a nice little taste of the competition and...well. They're clearly no match for us."

"How boring," said a tall boy in black with maroon face paint. "Well, I suppose we could always fight with a handicap."

"It'd have to be quite the handicap," laughed the girl. "Right, Ga-"

"_Ninpou–Shintenshin no Jutsu_!"

Sasuke stared at Ino, concerned and confused, but she crumpled before she could give an explanation. The other Suna girl, however, picked up a kunai from the floor and pressed it against her own throat, which was kind of explanation enough.

"This is Ino Yamanaka, a Team Konoha kunoichi, speaking," said the girl. "First things first. I've got Miss...Emiko here hostage, and if any of you try to harm my friends or act all dumb and cocky again, I'll kill her."_  
_

"You're bluffing," said the freakshow, a red-haired boy with a masive gourd on his back.

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not," said Ino-Emiko, her amber eyes glittering and one of Ino's trademark smiles crossing her face. "Care to find out?"

Nobody had an answer to that, so Ino-Emiko continued. "And secondly, I just want to inform you that even if it may not be immediately obvious, you have just made four very formidable enemies. And...um...you'll regret that," she finished lamely.

"Sure," snorted Temari. "Sure we will."

Ino-Emiko picked up another kunai with her free hand and threw it at the boy in black, hitting him in the middle of the chest. "Yeah," she said in a stronger voice, "you should."

Then she released her hold on the Suna girl and the real Ino turned to her teammates, saying, "Come on, guys. We should go get Tenten taken care of and find some really big sticks to hit these asshats with."

* * *

Neji glanced from the clock to Tenten's bruised face and sighed. He'd insisted that he'd keep Tenten company in the infirmary by himself and that Sasuke and Ino should really go and attend the Suna and Kumo welcome ceremony, and was really beginning to regret his decision.

It wasn't too bad when she was awake and cussing the Suna ninja out in three different languages. But the nurses had come in and ordered poor Tenten to get some rest, and so Neji sat in the cold room, doing nothing.

He supposed that it gave him a lot of time to think, but he didn't want to think. He'd already thought plenty and he was tired of thinking. And thought was depressing.

(But depressing or not, it was nearly midnight and he'd been sitting still for hours, said a part of him, so maybe a bit of depression would be a good idea.)

Eventually, though, he decided against it and continued to sit in silence, making it all the more surprising when the infirmary door creaked open and somebody tapped on his shoulder.

"Neji?"

"Uncle?"

It wasn't really a question–he knew it was Hiashi, even without hearing his voice, even though he couldn't see him. Neji knew that his uncle was going to be a judge during the tournament, and it was inevitable that at one point or another, he'd track Neji down and start preaching at him about the main house's superiority. It was possibly the most annoying thing destiny had ever done to the young Hyūga prodigy.

"Do you have a minute?"

Neji looked around the room slowly and raised an eyebrow. "No."

Hiashi sat down beside his nephew anyway. "Can we talk?"

"No."

"It's very important, Neji."

"I don't care."

"I really need to talk to you."

"I still don't care."

"It's about your father."

A small gasp escaped Neji's lips, much to his dismay, but he steeled himself and replied, "Look, Hiashi-dono. Not a single ounce of crap has been given up until now, so why do you think that that would change anything?"

Hiashi sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Fine, we won't talk about this now. Can we talk about normal things, instead?"

Neji rolled his eyes. "_Fine_," he sighed. "Whatever shall we talk about?"

"Who's this lovely lady?" asked Hiashi with a small smile.

And suddenly Neji found himself blushing furiously. Pulling his collar up over his face, he mumbled, "That's Tenten. She's on Team Konoha with me."

"You two going out?"

"No," said Neji, shooting his uncle a withering glare.

"How's Hinata?"

"Don't know." _Don't care._

"Did she make the team?"

"No, Ino Yamanaka did."

"I didn't expect her to. Oh, well."

Neji grunted and pulled his collar up further. "You can go now," he mumbled. Hiashi ignored him, and the two sat in silence.

Outside, the school clock struck midnight and the twelve thunderous chimes shook the floor. Neji and Hiashi watched the clock hands vibrate and Hiashi abruptly stood up.

"Well," said the Hyūga clan leader, "I have things I must attend to. Thank you for your time, Neji."

"Hmph."

"I'm glad we...had this talk."

* * *

**A/N: Whoa, check me out, I am _totally _becoming Crazy-Updater-Chick. Must be a sign of the apocalypse.**

**Or maybe it's just that these super short chapters are easy to bang out. **

**I apologize, dear readers, for the length (or lack thereof) of this one, and plus it was like _all _dialogue...but...uh...you got a bit of action?**

**And OH MY BUDDHA, what the _hell_ were the shippy feels in this chapter? SasuNeji? SasuTema? Sasu_Ten_? (*gag barf vomit*) Possibly NejiTen if you squint hard enough? Oh, I don't even know.**

**Ooh, and while I know my dear precious Sand Siblings are all different ages, in this they can be triplets or something, so everything works.**

**Finally, if it's not too much to ask, then I beg of y'all, dear readers, review.**

**The review button beckons you. IT CALLS TO YOU. APPEASE IT.**

**Imma just go now bye bye.**


	4. IV

**A/N: Well, as I always say, let's get the bad news outta the way first. Ahem. I am sorry to say that this week is my mom's week (my parents are divorced) and I'm not allowed to touch her computer, so I gotta type on my iPad which is a billion times slower. Thus there's a _huge _possibility that updates will be slower.**

**That's it, really. Answering time!**

**Purpleprincess1147: Thank you so much again. Your reviews make me so happy! And here's your update! (PS—please don't hate me for being weird uwu)**

**I really don't understand the point of the disclaimer—why would we be here if we owned our fandoms? But since I don't wanna get sued, I'll say it—Naruto ain't mine.**

**Oh! And Imma start dedicating chappies to people! Michelle, AKA Quoq, this one's for you.**

* * *

Tenten stared at the infirmary ceiling, her whole body aching, her brain half-asleep, and her vision blurry. It was an incredibly boring ceiling.

(Contrary to popular belief, Tenten knew there were, in fact, plenty of interesting ceilings in the world, such as the one in her dorm—she and Ino had covered it with stickers.)

She brushed a tangled strand of her hair out of her face and pushed herself up into a sitting position, causing her head to spin and her blood to run cold.

"Ugh, what the hell happened?" she asked nobody in particular, wincing upon hearing the raspiness of her voice.

"Suna happened."

"Neji?" The brunette craned her neck to look around the drab room in search of her teammate and felt like an idiot when she realized he was sitting two feet away from her.

"Yeah." He crossed his arms and stared out the window dejectedly.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. How are you? Ready to get out of here?"

Tenten wasn't. She knew that. Her torso was wrapped with more bandages than she knew what to do with and she knew she wasn't supposed to be putting any weight on her ankle for the next day or two (she really had to stop twisting it while doing the Sōshōryū). But she was bored, she could tell Neji was bored, and she got an overwhelming urge to beat Temari up as the events of the previous night came flooding back to her.

"Yep," she said, planting her feet on the floor and standing up shakily.

"You sure?" asked Neji, a hint of concern in his voice.

"I'm _fine_, Neji," laughed Tenten, and airily waved the comment aside. "Let's go have breakfast."

Neji narrowed his pale eyes slightly and furrowed his eyebrows. "Okay," he said eventually. "If you say so."

* * *

Ino fell into step beside her teammates in the breakfast line, accidentally knocking a few first years in the head with her tray.

"Yo people," she said. "Guess what?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes at the blonde. "You're finally gonna stop being so happy in the morning?"

She beamed at him. "Nope. We get to skip lessons today!"

Tenten's eyes widened. "What?"

"Yes," murmured Sasuke, "a whole day without Sakura!"

Ino couldn't help but feel ecstatic about that comment, but made sure not to show it, instead straightening her back and placing a granola bar on her tray. "Kakashi-sensei told me that we're gonna spend today training and getting to know each other and stuff. Isn't that great?"

Team Konoha was silent for a minute before Tenten brightened and said, "Um...totes!"

Ino's face fell and she turned towards the tables. "Well, _I_ thought so," she mumbled.

"I really meant it!" shouted Tenten, but Ino pretended not to hear her.

_Stupid goody-two-shoes-es, _she thought bitterly as she sat down across from Shikamaru. _A whole day without Anko's yelling or Lee's "youth" during P.E. is a _good_ day._

Shikamaru said nothing to her as he steadily ate his way through a small bowl of oatmeal, and she didn't make any stabs at conversation, either. When Ino was about halfway through her granola bar, Tenten and Sasuke sat down on either side of her, and began ranting about how they "didn't mean it; come on, Ino, you know we were just shocked! Seriously!" Neji, who sat across from her, occasionally provided a similar statement or a boring pearl of wisdom, like, "you're overreacting, Ino," but she didn't listen to any of them.

Wordlessly, she stood up and stalked off to toss the remains of her breakfast in the trash, flipping her hair and shooting her teammates a haughty glare as she walked past them. Tenten looked slightly hurt and rather confused, whereas Neji and Sasuke merely seemed bored.

Her footsteps echoed in the empty corridors as she walked towards her room, each step she took making her anger subside and making her feel more and more like an idiot. Which she was. She was a stupid overdramatic idiot who was definitely the weakest link on the team and needed to expand her vocabulary.

Ino was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice the annoying voice of Sakura Haruno saying, "Hey, pig."

"Oh my _goodness_, Sakura," she groaned. "I am so _done_ with your shit, okay? So can you just leave me alone?"

"Seriously, pi- Ino." Sakura grabbed the back of Ino's shirt and spun her around, forcing the blonde to look her in the eye. "Can we talk?"

Ino, shocked at her ex-friend's sudden character change, raised her eyebrows and blinked a few times. "Um...fire away."

A small smile crossed Sakura's face, but quickly twisted into a scowl. "Stay away from Sasuke-kun," she growled.

Ino narrowed her eyes. "Um...no thanks. Like you said two years ago, he and I are on the same team now."

"So?"

"So what? He's fair game, Billboard Brow. You're just jealous because now I have an even bigger chance with him."

"Yeah, right. If he was blind, deaf, and even stupider than you, maybe."

"Sakura-chan, sweetie, I really don't think you're in any place to be insulting my intelligence." Ino gave Sakura the biggest, brightest smile possible, and patted her on the head. "I mean, you seem to be forgetting that I made Team Konoha. And you didn't."

With that, she walked off with her head held high, feeling even worse because for a second, she thought she had a chance at fixing things.

_Don't be dumb, Ino, _she chided herself._ The past is in the past and that's all her fault._

Ino wished that it was true.

* * *

"G-G-_Gai-sensei_!?"

Neji Hyūga did not normally show emotion. And even when he did, they were small gestures, such as a faint blush or a fleeting smile. His jaw did not drop. His eyes did not bulge. He certainly did not stammer or drop his water bottle as he nearly fell on his face.

"Yosh!" The Hyūga's incredibly "youthful" team leader cocked his hip and flashed the third years a smile brighter than Ino's (though Ino's was flattering and definitely not creepy). "It is I, Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey!"

"Oh Lord," murmured Tenten. "Is he always like this?"

Neji shook his head. "He's just getting started."

And so, it seemed, Maito Gai was. For the first twenty minutes of their training, he lectured them on the power of youth, repeatedly using Neji as an example of what a properly "youthful" teen looked like. He then inexplicably ordered them all to drop everything and run twenty laps around the school on their hands. After that, Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Prey gave them all a short break for water and then ordered them to do it again, only backwards.

Ino, who ran the farthest, collapsed after seven laps. Neji barely made four.

After that, during their second lecture about youth, Gai began using Ino as an example instead.

(Neji decided it was because his sensei didn't want to discriminate against gender and used the blonde because her hair was roughly the same length as his.)

It was nearly noon when they all finally got to sit down. The blazing sun was high in the sky and the early-September Land of Fire temperatures had made their workouts even more unbearable.

"Yosh!" exclaimed Gai, giving the team a thumbs-up and another smile. "We have sufficiently warmed up in a youthful fashion! Now, let's move on to getting to know each other."

"That sounds dumb," panted Sasuke. "Can't we all go take a nap instead?"

Team Konoha nodded their assent.

Gai crossed his arms. "That's not very youthful, young man," he said. "Now, let's begin! We will all go around and tell everyone our names, likes, dislikes, and biggest dreams. I'll go first.

"I am Maito Gai the Beautiful Savage of Konoha, and I like super-spice curry rice, and the power of youth. However, I dislike boats. And my biggest dream is to beat my eternal rival by _three points_! Non-youthful young man, your turn."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "My name is Sasuke Uchiha. I hate a lot of things, and I don't particularly like anything. What I have is not a dream, because I will make it a reality. I'm going to restore my clan, and kill a certain someone. Um...yeah. Your turn, Ino."

"I'm Ino Yamanaka, and I like...well, _boys_, and food, but only sometimes; and shopping, and flowers. And I _dislike_ running backwards on my hands. My biggest dream is none of your business, unless your name is Tenten Zhang and you already know."

"I'm Tenten Zhang, like Ino just said, and I like sharp metal objects. Dull metal objects are okay, I guess, but they sometimes bounce off the target and make you miss, which I don't like. My biggest dream is probably to become a great kunoichi some day, but I'm not sure."

"And I'm Neji Hyūga. I like meditation and herring soba, while I rather despise pumpkins and don't really like spicy things. My biggest dream isn't any of your business, either, so don't even ask."

Gai's expression lost a bit of its enthusiasm as he stared at the team, who clearly did not live up to his expectations. Neji knew that his sensei didn't find him very "youthful", so of course he didn't have nearly as strong a bond with him as he did with Rock Lee, but Neji thought that Gai could have at least made an effort with the other students.

"Well then!" said Gai brightly after an awkward moment of silence. "Let's get started. Team Konoha, drop and give me fifty!"

* * *

Sasuke felt awful after the first day of training. It wasn't just that Maito Gai had the most insane workouts ever, it was that they made him feel like such a wimp.

First came the running-on-their-hands thing. Sasuke could barely do a handstand, much less run on his hands. He ran the least out of the four of them. And got owned by a _girl_. A girl like Ino Yamanaka, no less. A girl who wouldn't leave the room without brushing her impractically long hair for at least thirty minutes straight.

That was the biggest, most obvious thing. But he'd also whined about everything the entire day. His teammates (even Ino Yamanaka and her million-ryō manicure, even Tenten Zhang, who was covered in bandages and who winced in pain every time she took a step) soldiered through everything with barely a word of complaint, but he'd rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically and tossed his hair a lot and actually muttered that he'd "break a nail doing this" a few times, though he didn't think anybody heard him.

As Sasuke sat by the window and wallowed in self-pity while he watched the team from Suna duel out on the grounds, he realized another thing. If he couldn't make it through a single day of training, how would he be able to win the competition? How could he contribute to the team? At first he was convinced he'd rely on natural talent alone. But even Neji and his magnificent kekkei genkai couldn't do that. Even Neji and his Byakugan ran laps on his hands and diligently dropped and gave his sensei fifty when ordered.

Whereas Sasuke crossed his arms and only gave fourty-nine, of which at least three didn't really count.

It made Sasuke Uchiha feel like a failure, and he didn't think he liked the feeling.

* * *

**A/N: FINALLY! Guys, lookit, it's a (short) chapter! AAAAH!**

**Hey, you know what's weird? Every time I write a story where I _don't_ name the chapters, I always have a million names to give them, but every time I write a story where I _do_, I can't come up with anything.**

**Anyway, at the risk of sounding clichéd, whiny, greedy, and mainstream, reviews are totally appreciated. More than you'd think. **

**Although I understand if you're too busy curing cancer to review or something like that. Wait. No. If you're trying to find the cure for cancer, you really shouldn't be reading this. GO! CURE SICK PEOPLE! GAH!**


	5. V

**A/N: Let's get down to business [_to defeat the Huns_]. Anyway, I have nothing fun or witty to say, since I don't own Naruto.**

**Quoq: Asdfjkl, sweetie, I CAN'T. YOU'RE SO NICE AND SUPPORTIVE AND STUFF.**

**Purpleprincess1147: You don't!? Oh my Lord! I thought you did! Well here's an update. Mwah.**

**I dedicate this one to Purpleprincess1147, 'cause how could I not? She doesn't hate me even though I thought she did. That's some cool beans.**

* * *

Sasuke Uchiha was proud to say that twelve days of training under Neji's sensei had made him a better person.

And that was really the only good thing he had to say about Maito Gai's training.

While he had learned to drop and give Gai-sensei seventy-five without a word when ordered to give fifty, he was always, always sore and didn't have the energy to do anything after training. While his _sharingan_ had developed so far he could even break Kurenai-sensei's genjutsu, he got nervous, jumpy, and slightly nauseous every time he heard the word "youth."

And he did break his nails training. Numerous times. He and Ino had sat and complained about it together under their breaths at lunch one day until Sakura came along and called the blonde a slut. Sasuke didn't see her for the rest of the day after that, and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Looking at his teammates as they all sat silently in the small sitting room, he realized another good thing about the twelve days of training had done for them—sitting cramped together on the battered red couch in their uniforms and shiny new forehead protectors (which Ino, for some reason, had decided to wear around her waist instead), they were more of a team than ever. They'd learned to look out for each other; learned all of the other three's strengths and weaknesses and how to use them in a fight. They'd developed brand-new jutsu together and they were, in Sasuke's opinion, kinda badass.

He only hoped Team Konoha's newfound badassery was enough to take on the Suna triplets and their friend, who'd allegedly been training together their entire lives, or the two sets of twins from Kumo, who made people cower in fear as they walked down the hall.

"So!" said Ino brightly. "Everybody looking forward to...whatever it is we're doing?"

"Not particularly," replied Tenten. "Actually, I feel kinda sick."

"Well, don't be sick on me." Ino rooted through the official team backpack that was lying on the floor and took out a large metal water bottle. "Here," she instructed her friend, "you can be sick in here."

Tenten took the bottle gingerly and put it in her lap. "No thanks, but that's very nice of you."

Sasuke picked up the bag. "What's in this thing, anyway? Aside from a water bottle?"

"Several kunai, shuriken, and senbon, because Tenten didn't have enough of those already, a pack of water purification pills, a box of matches, a first aid kit, and...these," said Neji, holding up a handful of small multicolored sticks.

"Oh, those," said Sasuke, "they're these things; you burn 'em and they give off this neon-colored smoke so everybody can come and find you. I guess if there's an emergency, we light them on fire and the teachers come and save us."

"So what do you think we're doing, if we need those? Some kind of survival exercise?"

"I guess."

Team Konoha resumed their sitting in silence until some sensei, Sasuke didn't see who, took them out onto the grounds, where the entire school and the handfuls of third years from the other academies had gathered. A school bus sat idling by the main gates and several kids were eyeing it nervously.

"Attention, students."

Hiruzen Sarutobi strode out the double doors with his robes trailing behind him, spotless as always, turning everybody's heads and commanding their total attention without even trying (which Sasuke wished he could do, because all he could do was attract the attention of teenage girls and even that took effort).

"The five teams from the five great ninja schools are now embarking on their first task," he announced, "which will last for three days, and take place in the Forest of Death."

A hush fell over the crowd.

"The Forest of..._Death_?" squeaked a red-haired girl from the Kiri team, her face going whiter than the marble statue of Konoha's founder that she stood in front of.

"Indeed. Children, you have five minutes for goodbye."

_He must enjoy this, _thought Sasuke as he gave every girl who ran up to him squealing a tiny, halfassed hug. _The old bat must be having the time of his life here, sending children off to their dooms._

Sasuke was pretty sure more than five minutes had passed as an endless string of terse "bye"s and tearful, overdramatic "I WILL MISS YOU SO MUCH"es went through the crowd. He didn't mind, though, because after his fangirls had all gone back to their hiding places, he got to watch (and laugh at) the more interesting goodbyes—Ino slapping Shikamaru, kissing him, patting him on the head, and then telling him to "stay awake for me, Shika," or two of the freakshow's fangirls scrabbling at the shield of sand he'd put up, frantically yelling how they'd "love you forever, Gaara-kun, even if you lose!"

Sasuke also couldn't help but feel kind of bad for the people nobody was saying anything to: Neji, Tenten, Emiko of Suna, the entire team from Kumo. He knew that they probably weren't being sent off to their dooms, that they'd probably come back, and that it was only for three days, but it was still a major thing. Especially for a thirteen-year-old.

But then finally Sarutobi smiled and bid them all a final adieu and the senseis loaded them onto the bus towards the Forest of Death and possible demise.

* * *

"You're late," said Kakashi as the bus pulled up and the small shinobi and kunoichi filed out.

Anko swatted him and placed her hands on her hips. "You aren't much better," she snapped. "Alright, now listen up! This," she shouted, gesturing at the chain-link fence and the wall of oaks and redwoods behind her, "is the Forest of Death. Kiddies, if you're gonna run away, wetting your pants and screaming in terror, now is the time to do so."

She looked at the teams expectantly, and Ino noticed the red-haired girl from Kiri (Mei or something along those lines), especially, looked like she wanted to take Anko up on her offer.

"Each team gets one of these," Anko went on, procuring two black scrolls from her coat. "A _yin_ scroll. Throughout the forest, we've hidden five _yang_ scrolls. Your job is to find one and take your two scrolls to the tower in the middle of the forest."

"You have three days," added Kakashi, to a collective "We know" from the teams assembled. "And we've got cameras everywhere. So don't do anything embarrassing. The judges will be sitting in the tower, and at the end of the thing, you'll all be evaluated. You get points for speed, skill, teamwork, and some other stuff. Teams, choose yourselves a gate." He pointed to a metal gate set into the fence. "There's one for each of you."

Ino marched over to the one in the middle and waved Team Konoha over. When they were all assembled, Anko walked up and pressed a _yin_ scroll into Ino's hands.

"Good luck," murmured her teacher. "I really hope you win this, Ino."

Her eyes widened. "Thank you, Anko-sensei," she said, shocked. "I'll try."

Anko smiled and ran over to Kakashi. "Okay!" she boomed. "Are y'all ready? The gates open in...three! Two! One! _Go!_"

And off they went.

* * *

They weren't half an hour into the game when the blizzard kicked up, and Neji was pretty sure that the snow was going to be the least of their worries.

What with his _byakugan_, he was the one Team Konoha'd decided would be in charge of guarding the scroll. That, for some reason, also meant that he was in charge of carrying the backpack, looking out for wild animals (or wild ninja), and carrying Tenten, whose ankle, which she had injured with her Sōshōryū, had decided to stop working entirely, thus rendering her somewhat incapable of doing anything.

But even eyes with the _byakugan _got snow in them, which made things rather difficult, especially while the wielder was carrying a teenage girl plus seven pounds of ninja stuff. And so Neji constantly stumbled and slipped on the icy branches and dropped his kunai and was sure that the judges...that his _uncle_...was not going to give Team Konoha an awful lot of points for this display.

"You know," mused Ino as she skipped along the branches, "normally I like being on camera, but this is kinda stressy."

Neji rolled his eyes. "You don't know half of it," he sighed.

He felt Tenten's head move on his shoulder as she turned to look towards the entrance. "We're miles in," she said. "We should, like, make camp and get a plan. The _yang_ scrolls could be anywhere."

The three mobile members of Team Konoha stopped and nodded tersely jumped down from their tree, and landed face-first in the snow.

"We are _so_ getting style points for this," said Sasuke, to the collective groan of everybody.

Neji supposed it was kinda funny, though. He just forgot to laugh.

* * *

"Well, this is fun," said Tenten, dragging herself out from under the bush. "Anybody else find anything?"

"Nope."

"Nothing."

"Nada."

She sighed and grabbed the first aid kit from the backpack, wrapping her ankle in a fresh set of bandages. "Two questions, then, since we've all established that there are no scrolls in these bushes."

"Fire away," replied Neji.

"Okay. One, just how big is the Forest of Death?"

"God only knows," said Ino. "Something like...oh, I've got no idea."

"Let's see," said Sasuke. "We've traveled, like, three miles, right? And that's the tower over there in the distance, which is obviously in the middle. That's, like, seven miles away, give or take. Meaning the radius is around ten miles, the diameter twenty, and the circumference...uh..."

"Roughly sixty-two point eight miles, assuming the entire forest is circular, and not just the front bit," Ino supplied. "And that would mean the area is...like...three hundred fourteen square miles."

"Sheesh," said Tenten. "That's a lot of math, and a lot of ground. Okay. Two—does it normally snow in September over here?"

The Land of Fire natives of Team Konoha looked up and around, almost as if noticing the storm for the first time.

"No," said Neji. "It doesn't."

Tenten nodded. "So why is it snowing?"

Silence fell over the teens, who were further quieted by the snow, which sucked all the noise out of their breathing and movements. Finally Ino suggested, "Maybe it's an enemy ninjutsu?"

"Let's find out, shall we?" Tenten had no idea how she'd go about doing that, she just felt smart saying it; luckily she was saved by Sasuke's _sharingan_ being activated and him announcing, "Yeah. Somebody out there's got themselves a Blizzard no Jutsu."

"Can you tell who it is?"

"No, sorry."

"Why do you think they're using it now?"

"Why are you so inquisitive, Tenten Zhang?"

Tenten sighed, her breath clouding up the surface of the shuriken she was playing with. "Just answer the damn question, Uchiha."

"Because they feel like it."

"It's probably to give them some sort of tactical advantage," said Neji. "Maybe the snow boosts their other powers?"

"Or maybe they're hiding in it," said Ino. "Hiding...and waiting."

"For what, a _yang_ scroll to come walking out of the trees? Forget it, Ino."

The blonde blinked and shrank somewhat at Sasuke's words. "Well excuse _me_," she said softly. "Just trying to be helpful."

"But you're _not_ being helpful," snapped Sasuke, "so why bother?"

"Because I _can_, Sasuke Uchiha, and that's a perfectly good reason to bother."

"But it's unnecessary. You're wasting your breath-"

"Of which I have plenty-"

"-and my time-"

"Which is useless anyway-"

"-and-"

"Oh my _goodness_, you two," said Tenten. "Shut _up_."

"Yeah, Ino," muttered Sasuke, "shut _up_."

Tenten slapped him as discreetly as possible and prayed that Ino hadn't heard her long-time crush.

And while she was at it, she figured she'd pray for other things, too. So she prayed to every deity she could think of that they'd win the event and that her ankle would fix itself and that she would fit in with everybody at Konoha and so on, so forth. Her thoughts were big, and she was cold. It wasn't the best moment of Tenten's life.

Then again, she had a lot of it left to live. She had time.

"...think we should just find another team, wait until they've got the scroll, take it, and run," said Ino. "What do you think, Tenten?"

"What? Oh, yeah, totes," she said, snapping out of her reverie. "Sounds genius."

"Great. The plan's a go."

Team Konoha gathered up their things and set off after Ino through the snow and the looming trees.

"Do you know what's going on?" she asked Neji after twenty minutes of half leaning on him, half limping, and half tripping over her own two feet (which brought her up to one and a half things, but she didn't really care).

"No," he said. "I kinda never do."

* * *

**A/N: What**

**Seriously what**

**I don't know. I...copied...the...chūnin exams? But it's okay because this is a fanfic and everybody knows I have no creativity anyway?**

**OH RIGHT! Important announcement! I've got seriously _no clue_ when the next chapter will roll around 'cause there's Christmas (meh) family (bleh) and then I'm off to New York for...what did I call it, emotional therapy? Something like that. That implies seeing friends (yay), Barnes and Noble (hooray), giant pretzels just 'cause I can (unhealthay), and robbing the Museum of Natural History.**

**Wait, no, I mean _visiting_ ****the Museum of Natural History. Visiting. Right.**

******Anyway, review!**


	6. VI

**A/N: NO TIME TO WASTE WITH AN A/N! OH NO! NARUTO AIN'T MINE!**

**Real4You: Hehe...thanks. (Oh Lord, is it that bad? Seriously, should I just go ahead and call this a crossover?) **

**Purpleprincess1147: Thank you thank you and ooh, are you? Cool!**

**Quoq: D'aww thank you, but you're the adorable one. Seriously! You're like this shining beacon of happiness****. Your reviews are so sweet and...*has no idea what to say* *but thank you***

**baobei: Thank you! And...oh. Does it? Hehehe. (Where can I find creativity-boosting pills uwu) But seriously thank you.**

**This chapter is for FruitySmell 'cause she (or at least I'm 97% certain she's ****a she) is totally epic and yet she still acknowledged my existence. More cool beans.**

* * *

"Has anybody died of frostbite yet?"

"No," sighed the not-as-freaky Suna boy, "so stop asking."

"Why hasn't anybody died of frostbite yet?"

"I don't know, Emiko. But you're doing this so you can find the _yang_ scroll. Not to kill people."

Ino thought that Emiko was doing a _fine_ job of killing people, and that was pretty much the only coherent thought in her head. They were sitting behind a massive tree, following her genius plan and waiting for Team Suna to find a scroll. It was all good fun and did wonders for her ego, except she was getting rather cold, sitting there in the snow, still as a statue and even more silent.

She saw the freakshow, Gaara, place his head in his hands and sigh. "Why are we doing this?" he asked, angry voice muffled by his teammate's ninjutsu. "Why don't we just steal some other team's scroll once they find one?"

Ino wasn't sure how to react to that.

"What _I_ think the _real_ question is," said Emiko haughtily, _her_ voice loud and clear, "is _why hasn't anybody died of frostbite yet_? It's cold! It's snowing! I'm cold!"

"Emiko-"

"There are, like, four ninja right behind us," she continued, "and they're still alive when they should be dead..."

She went on and on, but Ino had stopped listening and she reckoned the others had, too. The ninja of Team Suna all whirled around to face the tree, and slowly and silently, the members of Team Konoha all turned to look at each other, for once all in agreement on something, fear written clearly all over their faces.

"What the hell are they doing here!?" demanded the blonde with the bad attitude, Temari, taking her fan off her back.

Ino grabbed Sasuke's wrist in one hand and Tenten's in her other, pulling them away from the tree. "_Run_!"

* * *

Adrenaline and angry teenage ninja did wonders for badly twisted ankles, realized Tenten as she leaped between the massive trees with two fully functioning feet and a spring in her step, to boot.

Not far behind her, Emiko was whining her head off about her head hurting, her snow annoying her, and her kekkei genkai not working the way she wanted it to, to the incredible annoyance of everyone everywhere. But the kunoichi's whining was the least of Tenten's problems; she figured she'd worry a bit more about the flying puppets and bullets of sand and endless barrage of ice-balls the size of rhinos coming from behind her. Because there were a lot of them. And Tenten didn't fancy being killed by one.

Temari, who didn't seem to have anything to throw, was in charge of shouting insults at Team Konoha. "Losers," she jeered. "Wimps. What kind of idiots can't even be bothered to find their own scroll? And now you're all so ashamed you're running away—you're all so pathetic."

"If I _may_," snapped Ino, "your _brother_ suggested the _exact same thing_. So all of this is awful hypocritical, ain't it? Coming from somebody so protective of him?"

"Quiet, you," said Temari. "That's different."

"Um, no, it really isn't."

The two bickered on for a good five minutes until Sasuke pushed Ino off her tree branch, into the snow, and before Tenten could ask what he was doing, he jumped down after her. With nowhere better to go and nothing better to do, Tenten and Neji took the leap.

"Oh, what the hell," Tenten heard the non-freakshow grumble.

_Yeah, _she thought, _what the hell indeed._

Then she hit the ground and didn't think much at all—too much snow in her eyes, too many rocks in her shoes, and too much pain in her head.

Tenten was beginning to understand Emiko's whining.

* * *

"Why did you do that?" Neji arched an eyebrow at Sasuke, who was running across the valley like a madman, frozen grass crunching beneath his feet and weapons jangling.

"Do what?" panted the Uchiha.

"Jump out of the tree?" suggested Tenten dryly as she and Ino fell into step with the boys. "For no apparent reason?"

"Oh, that," he said, stopping and looking back at the stretch of forest they ran away from. "The Suna kids looked pretty angry."

"We could totally take them," scoffed Ino.

"Well, we didn't. And now we're off to find a new team to steal a scroll from. I decided."

"Who died and made you king?" asked Neji, but Sasuke ignored him. And so Team Konoha walked in silence.

Even though the landscape was the same as far as Neji could see, with the exception of the river bank in the distance, he activated his _byakugan_ and scanned the area. He supposed he was looking for a _yang_ scroll, to save the team some trouble, but he knew he'd find nothing.

By sundown, though, Neji was happy he'd activated his _byakugan_. The valley they were trekking through provided no cover whatsoever, thus making them easy targets for the forest's native cougars, bears, and giant snakes (which turned out to be kind of useful when Ino decided to take over one's brain and destroy some enemy camp, but then after that the reptiles were back on their murderous rampage and Sasuke nearly died).

Around ten thirty, if Tenten's astrological sense of time (or whatever Ino called it) was to be trusted, they reached the riverbank. What with its lack of snow (it had cold mud instead), the tower being a hundred yards downstream, and of course the water, it seemed to be an ideal camp location, but was already being used by another team.

Who, upon further inspection of their belongings, had a _yang_ scroll.

Neji immediately took back every bad thing he'd ever said about fate and destiny. The universe was officially smiling down upon him on that day. The heavens, he reckoned, had gotten sick of hating him and decided to bless him and his team. And life was looking up.

He pocketed the scroll and looked at his teammates. "We've got it. Do we run?"

Tenten bit her lip and began nodding, but was cut off by Sasuke and Ino, who picked up a fūma shuriken and the team's backpack nodded at each other.

Ino dumped the contents of the bag out on the mud and tore the empty bag in two, flashing her trademark smile. "Not without leaving a parting gift first."

Sasuke unexpectedly smiled back at Ino as he breathed fire over the mystery team's supplies, and the two seemed gleeful as they stomped on the ashes and threw them into the river for good measure. Neji was slightly less so—even though the odds were currently in his favor, who was to say the enemy ninja weren't coming back? They were probably on their way.

"Guys," he said, "we should get going."

"Wait." Tenten opened Team Konoha's backpack and drew out two of the brightly colored sticks. "I wanna leave them a gift, too."

"What," said Neji, "by getting them escorted out of the game?"

Tenten handed the sticks to Sasuke, who grinned and lit them on fire with a miniature version of his _Gōkakyū no Jutsu_ and stuck them in the mud.

"Exactly," said Tenten. "Or at least I'll try." She stood back and watched the green and orange smoke billow higher into the cloudy night sky. "Okay, then, people. Now we run."

* * *

They'd made it safely to the tower shortly after the ninja from Suna, who were all incredibly proud of themselves and proceeded to shoot Team Konoha lots of little smug smiles for the two days they spent inside the tower's stone walls. Temari, especially, was particularly fond of popping up and reminding them about how her team "found the scroll _ourselves_, losers. And we got here _before_ you. Ha, ha, ha."

On the morning of the second day, the team from Kumo arrived, and the team from Kiri late that afternoon. Only three of the ninja from Iwa showed up, and they arrived literally two minutes before the official end of the event—and Sasuke couldn't help but wonder what happened.

And then it was sundown and cameras were being wheeled into the room and Sasuke saw the panel of judges assemble: the principals of the five schools, Neji's uncle Hiashi, and a blonde woman with a bottle of saké in one hand and an empty wallet in the other. He supposed that she was the replacement for his grandmother, who was originally going to be a judge but was hospitalized with several severe injuries (which were officially from her taking a nasty tumble down some cliff somewhere, but Sasuke knew were from his brother's failed attempt at murdering the elderly woman) and thus was unable to make the trip out to the school.

"Well then," said the auburn-haired principal of the Suna Academy, "shall we get started?"

Sasuke felt Ino fumble for his hand and nearly jerked it away, but let her take it. He understood she'd be nervous (he was pretty anxious himself), and besides, she wasn't that bad. Just rather annoying. (And maybe kinda pretty, but nearly every boy at the school thought so—so that meant nothing.)

"Indeed," said Principal Sarutobi. "So, children, here's how this will work. Each of us will give you a score out of ten, with ten being the highest and one being the lowest, so the maximum amount of points you can be awarded per event is seventy. Are we clear?" He didn't wait for an answer before continuing. "We'll begin with the team that arrived last, Team Iwa, then the second to last team to arrive, Team Kiri, and so on, and so forth until Team Suna." Sarutobi nodded to a small, purple-eyed man at the end of the table. "Yagura, you may begin."

"Thank you," said the principal of the Kiri Institute. "Team Iwa, your teamwork was good, and your strategy was sound. However, you didn't actually show up with a scroll, and one of your members—Suzumebachi, is it?—did not accompany you back to the tower. All in all, I award you seven points. Where is Miss Suzumebachi, anyway?"

"She got bitten by a snake," said the other Iwa girl. "It was pretty weird, actually. We were gonna light those sticks, to get help, because she was bleeding and dying all over the place, but they were already lit when we got back to camp, and the medical nin came, like, two seconds after we did."

"Oh my goodness, Ten," muttered Ino. "You spread happiness and goodwill, like, everywhere you go, don't you?"

"And someone destroyed our stuff, _un_," whined a blonde Iwa boy, causing Sasuke and Ino to blush slightly, but other than that, he was totally ignored.

"Anyway," said the next principal at the table, the one from Iwa, "I give my team a ten!"

Suna's principal narrowed his eyes. "You're being rather biased, aren't you? They didn't even find a scroll."

The old man stood up to look his fellow shinobi in the eye. "Well, nobody said I can't be, so _ha_."

"Fine, then," said Suna's principal. "Then I will be, too. However, I will also recognize a job well done, and I award Team Iwa seven points."

"Four," announced the principal of the Kumo school without hesitation.

"Eight," countered Sarutobi.

Hiashi Hyūga steepled his fingers and said, "I give the Iwa ninja six points."

"Eh, what does it matter?" The blonde woman took a swig from her bottle and flopped forward in her seat. "It's just a game."

"Please, Tsunade-sama," said Neji's uncle, frowning. "Just give them something."

"Nine," she mumbled.

"Thank you. Congratulations, Team Iwa," said Hiashi, "you get fifty-one points. Now, Yagura-san, if you could start with the evaluation of Team Kiri?"

"Certainly. You four were somewhat lacking in the teamwork department, and you didn't really seem to have much of a strategy, but you all displayed great skill in battle, and you got a scroll, so I give you eight points."

"Hmm...I think I'll give you six points," said the little old man from Iwa. "You don't deserve it, mind you, but I like your sword, young man." He pointed to a heavily bandaged Kiri boy and waggled his finger in the general direction of the boy's massive sword. "So you get an extra three points."

"Another seven," said the principal of the Suna school.

"Five."

Sasuke noted that Kumo's principal didn't seem to be in a very good mood.

"Seven," announced Sarutobi.

Hiashi's frown deepened. "Six."

The blonde woman, Tsunade, groaned and took another swig of saké. "Eight. Good job, brats, forty-seven points."

"Hmph," said all four members of Team Kiri, glaring at each other.

"Team Kumo," said Yagura, "you were, quite simply, amazing. Nine."

"Six," said the little old man from Iwa. "You all had nice swords, too."

"Eight."

"TEN!" Kumo's principal stood up and pumped his fist in the air. "You four are wonderful!"

"Sit down, A," said Sarutobi gently. "Team Kumo, I award you seven points."

"Ten," said Neji's uncle.

"Six!" spat Tsunade. "And you should all be happy I feel bad about giving you anything lower."

"Right." Yagura blinked a few times and shook his head. "Team Kumo, congratulations on your fifty-six points."

Sasuke bit his lip and Ino squeezed his hand. He found his heart beating a million times a minute—they were about to get a string of vitally important numbers that could, theoretically, change their lives forever or something.

The somewhat newfound feeling of being a failure gnawed at his stomach, which was a mosh pit filled with butterflies, and he started to feel nauseous.

"Team Konoha," Yagura went on, "your teamwork also needs a bit of improvement, but your strategy was good and you all seem to be incredibly talented. You also get points for that random act of life-saving. Eight."

"Eight," admitted Iwa's principal grudgingly.

"Nine."

"Seven," said A.

"Ten. Good job, Team Konoha."

"Eight. Neji, you did terribly," said Hiashi. "But the rest of you were good."

Tsunade finished off her bottle and slapped the Hyūga, knocking him out of his chair. "_You're_ doing terribly, Hiashi Hyūga. Pfft. Team Konoha, you four are adorable! Boy with long fabulous hair, especially you. Good job carrying the injured girl around all the time. I ship you two. Ten!" She looked down at her fingers and counted on them for a moment. "Yay! Sixty points for you!"

"Who let her drink?" mumbled Sarutobi.

"I have no idea," slurred Tsunade, "but I like them."

Sasuke did, too. They had an excellent shot at winning the event, thanks to whoever let Tsunade drink.

"Team Suna," said Yagura loudly, clearly trying to get things back on track, "you had good teamwork, and show lots of promise. The only thing that needs improvement is your strategy—'kill everything in hopes we'll find something,' as Miss Emiko so poetically put it, is something of an easy way out, no? Nevertheless, I award you eight points."

"Seven!"

"Ten." Suna's principal shot the little old man next to him a sly grin, and then recomposed himself. "By the way, Gaara, if you could stay behind after this, I must speak to you."

"Seven," grunted A.

"Nine," said Sarutobi.

"Eight."

"Eight! You four weren't nearly as cute as Team Konoha," sniffed Tsunade. "And..._ooooh_! Team Suna, you only get fifty-seven points!"

Sasuke's eyes widened as he looked from Ino to Neji to Tenten, who all beamed at him. "We...won," he breathed.

"HELL YES!" Ino yelled, hugging them all. "I KNEW WE WOULD! I LOVE YOU ALL!"

Sasuke wasn't sure how to take that, but at that moment, he was pretty sure he loved Team Konoha, too.

* * *

**A/N: And there we have it! The longest (and prolly most tedious) chappie yet!**

**I'm not gonna bore you with a super huge A/N, so I'll keep this brief—happy, happy holidays, lovely readers. Whatever you may celebrate.**

**Ooh, and please review!**


	7. VII

**A/N: Holadoodles, all you superdupermarshmellowliciously awesometatiousful people!**

**Yep. Those words are totally in the dictionary.**

**Quoq: Like I said already: **

**Thankieeeess! And...idk! Because I'm inclined to believe that not all drunks are bad? (Just Swedish ones?)  
****Thank you...(the idea was pretty much exactly the same as the one in the manga god I'm terrible) Yep it was, and no not really...I was getting rushed. Wait are those [last two things] good or bad?****  
****Well, he is.****  
DON'T WE ALL.**

**But seriously, thank you. **

**Misery: Hola!**

**YES SASUKE AND INO! SASUINO FOR LIFE!**

**Gah, you're so mainstream. It's canon that she was the smartest in their class, you know.**

**Hmm...I don't know. I might.**

**Do you? Hmm. I kinda feel that too, but this is just the way I felt like writing them, you know? (Assuming you mean OOC.) **

**But thank you, and thanks for the review.**

**Dedicated to I'myourmisery. Yay!**

* * *

"What happened to your teamwork!?" boomed Maito Gai, pacing back and forth. "You spent days working on it! And then..._poof_! Gone! Not youthful!"

"It was fine until it started snowing," said Sasuke with a shrug. Tenten rolled her eyes.

"It was fine until the game started," she corrected, "and we all stopped caring about that, 'cause we just wanted to win."

Ino yawned, absentmindedly finger-brushing her mane of tangled blonde hair. "What does it matter?" she asked, slumping on to Sasuke's shoulder and half-closing her puffy, bloodshot eyes. "Like, we won anyway."

Sasuke, who looked equally exhausted and confused, patted her on the head and nodded. "By three entire points," he yawned, and placed his head on top of Ino's (making Tenten feel bad her friend wasn't fully conscious—it would have been the best moment of the week for her if she was). "That's some cool beans, Gai-sensei."

"Yeah," said Ino. "_Cool beans_."

As she and Sasuke giggled away at their beans, a part of Tenten couldn't help but wonder if they'd gotten their hands on some of Tsunade-sama's saké (though the rest of her figured they were just really _special_ at two in the morning).

She, Gai, and Neji simply sat there and watched the slightly hysterical Yamanaka and incredibly hysterical Uchiha giggle and pat each other on the head until Gai ordered them all to run fifty laps around the yard on their hands. Backwards.

Then she and Neji got to watch the two hysterical ninja do handstand forward rolls into walls as they laughed and cried and called each other names in various languages while they were all _upside down_.

It was not an excellent way to kick off the day.

When the sun finally peeked up over the horizon and began to cast its friendly golden glow over the Konoha Institute, Tenten, being the first to finish her fifty laps, had also ran a good ten miles on foot, frog-jumped another two, and done a grand total of three hundred push-ups, for Maito Gai seemed to be strongly against the idea that anyone on the planet should ever get any rest. She was sore all over and highly doubted that the effort was healthy.

"You know," said Tenten to Ino when she finally caught up with the group, "I'm actually looking forward to lessons for once. Anything's better than this, right?"

Ino yawned for the millionth time and flopped over the fence, her head rattling the metal. "Yeah," she said. "Though I've heard you'll burn a whole day's worth of calories if you bump into Gai-sensei first thing in the morning."

"Mm." Tenten examined the dirt under her fingernails for a moment, making a mental note to cut them later, and sighed. "_I've_ heard we have a special class today. Or tomorrow. Or something."

"That's fun."

"You think so?"

"Uh...no." Groaning, Ino straightened her back and pushed away from the fence, promptly falling flat on her face, a mess of long limbs and frizzy hair and dead blades of grass. "But maybe it'll involve shopping."

"I bet you twenty ryō it won't."

"Ooh! Deal."

Tenten smiled. "You do realize that means you have to pay me when you lose, right?"

Ino swung herself up into a sitting position and elbowed the brunette in the ribs. "Getting cocky, are we? Ha. Well, I guess that's kinda the fun in betting."

"I beg to differ. It's totally about winning."

"Yeah, you're kinda right."

"I always am."

* * *

"Soccer!" yelled Ino as soon as she stepped into the gym. "There are soccer things _everywhere_!"

Tenten raised an eyebrow. "You like...soccer?"

"Totally." Ino picked up a soccer ball and punted it towards the wall. "It's one of my guilty pleasures," she laughed. "Right up there with burnt Wonder Bread and and making flower crowns."

"Uh-huh." Tenten didn't look impressed, but Ino didn't care as she ran around the gym and kicked every ball she could find into the goals set up at either side of the room, acting nearly as hysterical as she had been that morning (only then it wasn't anywhere near as embarrassing, because then Sasuke had been even worse).

"Right, then, listen up, class."

The Konoha and small group of Suna, Kumo, Kiri, and Iwa third years sorta kinda listened up, facing the middle of the room and some of the slightly more interested students standing a bit closer to the young woman in the middle of the room.

"My name is Yugito Nii, and I'm the substitute for today. Maito Gai, who would normally be your teacher, had apparently gotten a bad headache earlier this morning and hit the hay early. And...well, here I am." She snatched a soccer ball from Ino and crossed her arms. "Since I've got no idea what you're all doing in gym, I figured that you'd all play a nice game of soccer. Konoha against other schools, I guess. Yeah, Konoha against the rest of you lot, that sounds good. Now, if Miss Yamanaka could be so kind as to put the gym back together, we'll be all set."

Ino rolled her eyes, setting about doing just that with a lot of dramatic huffing and puffing, but didn't make it far—she had taken a grand total of perhaps ten steps towards an upside-down goal when Kakashi-sensei stepped into the room (without his book for the first time in history).

"I'm sorry to say that there won't _be_ any P.E. today, Miss Yugito, students." He crossed his arms. "Third years will be taking a special class today, out in the field, so to speak."

"Oh?" Yugito arched her eyebrows. "And why wasn't I informed about this?"

"Because you're eighteen years old and not technically a qualified teacher," sighed Kakashi. "Now, third years, follow me."

"In our _gym clothes_?" asked Sakura, tugging at her top. She wrinkled her nose. "No thank you."

Tenten's hand shot into the air. "What are we even doing?"

"I'll explain en route," said Kakashi. "But long story short, you guys finally get to learn how to go undercover."

* * *

Tenten Zhang had noted a few things about the Konoha Institute; things that were drastically different from her old school. At Konoha, a kunoichi learned how to fight. She learned all the different ways to kill someone twice her size using a no. 2 pencil. She learned how use enemy genjutsu to her advantage. She learned her way around every sword known to man, she learned how to break a block of titanium with her head, she learned all about natural poisons and where to find them.

But while the Konoha Institute had at least three courses on shurikenjutsu through the ages, it didn't seem to give any justice to what Tenten was educated to believe the true skills of a ninja were—disguises, blackmail, encryption, deception, and even the little things, like etiquette.

Tenten knew that her proficiency in weapons didn't hold a candle to her ability to blend in; to disappear, whether it be in a crowded city or an empty room. She had been in_ demand_ since she'd learned to walk and chew gum at the same time, for all sorts of coded messages and clandestine operations that any normal five-year-old should never have anything to do with.

So she was looking forward to the A+ she'd undoubtedly receive.

The only instructions they'd gotten were to transform into normal people using only the clothes they had in their closets. It seemed that not every third year in the class was particularly adept at that.

There were a handful of teens who'd dressed up adequately enough—Tenten, of course, looked as forgettable and bland as a paper clip, Sakura and Ino, while they looked like they'd just stepped off of a magazine cover, still managed to look incredibly normal, and the girls from Kumo, with their navy blue tracksuits and high ponytails, could have been anyone. But there wasn't a single boy in the classroom who didn't stand out like a mourner at a wedding. Gaara the freakshow had found a bedsheet to throw over his head and massive gourd and looked nearly as inconspicuous as Lee, who'd refused to shed his spandex and even took the plunge, topping it off with a propeller hat and designer shades. The Kiri team didn't even look like they were trying, what with their fake mustaches and "Hello, my name is" stickers emblazoned "Bob." Every last one. Even the girls'.

She kind of wanted to help them. But she decided to secretly gloat instead.

"Five minutes are up," said Kakashi, snapping her out of her little reverie as he strode into the room, again book-less. "Most of you...look terrible. Off to the bus!"

"That's it? No..._help_?" drawled Emiko, who hadn't bothered at all, still in her mesh tank top and baggy pants with pockets filled with all sorts of toys Tenten would have loved to get her hands on. "No 'maybe if you tucked your shirt in like this...'es or anything on 'never ever ever wear both horizontal and vertical stripes, Mr. Uchiha'?"

"Well, Ms. Yuki, you clearly _know_ not to wear two different kinds of stripes at the same time, so I don't believe help is necessary."

"Gaara is wearing a _bedsheet_," she snapped, her tone of voice verging on the whininess Tenten had heard so much of in the Forest of Death. "Aren't you- don't you- weren't we just supposed to use the things in our _closets_? That's a Konoha Institute bedsheet that was washed this morning. Team Suna was training since the crack of dawn. Plus, it smells like flowers. Gaara does not smell like flowers. No offence, of course, Gaara-kun. Um...right. It clearly did not come from his closet and he is breaking all sorts of rules. Anyway, point being, yes, we _do_ look terrible. Help is _so_ necessary. And we should _not_ be off to the bus."

Kakashi sighed. "What do you want me to say? 'Oh, by the way, Mr. Uchiha, while you're off fixing your stripe issue, black is the new black. It's boring. Wear a lot of it.' There's only one real way to learn, and that's by doing things yourself. People might look at Sasuke Uchiha weirdly as he and his pretty friend Neji Hyūga, who has a paper bag on his head, prance by. They might ask questions. Hell, one or two might pull the prancing pretty boys over and question their mental health. But it'll be their _own damn fault_, and next time they hit the town, maybe they'll have the sense to not wear paper bags and two different types of stripes. Maybe not. And then it'll be their own damn fault _all over again_." He paused and fingered the fabric of his mask, heaving another sigh and surveying the quiet that had fallen over the class. "As ninja, none of you have room for mistakes. You can't let things be your own damn fault. One day, it'll get you hurt. It may even get you _killed_. Be happy you're making these mistakes now, kiddies. Because if any of you were on an actual mission and you were making these mistakes, you were prancing along with a bag on your head or a sticker saying you were a girl named Bob, and your cover was blown, you'd put yourself, your comrades, and the mission in jeopardy. Let this be a valuable lesson, kids. It may as well happen to you. Now..." He pushed open the door and gestured towards the hall. "To the bus."

* * *

Ino lost Tenten in less than five minutes, which she was petty sure was some kind of world record.

"Tenten Zhang," she called, "where art thou? Are you really gonna make me sit here alone?"

"Mebbe," came Tenten's reply from somewhere in the sea of people on the bus. "Unless you find me."

"_Tenten_! That's not fair."

"Too bad, Ino Yamanaka. _Too bad_."

Ino rolled her eyes and looked for the first brunette she could find, grabbing their shirt and dragging them to her seat. "Are you Tenten Zhang?" she snapped.

"Whoa. Yeah, I am." Tenten blinked. "Damn. How'd you know it was me?"

"I didn't. I just grabbed the first brunette I saw." She shook her head and plopped down in the hard plastic seat. "So don't worry, your disguise is still sound."

"Goodie." Tenten smoothed out her hair and furrowed her eyebrows. "You know," she said, "I hate to say it, Ino, but you're not very observant, are you?"

"I'm totally observant! Like, you see that blonde guy from Iwa, the one who looks like me? He's blinked twice as much as an average human does during the past five minutes."

"Perchance," said Tenten in her smart voice (which Ino had some strong opinions on), "but there are three vital, and very basic, things you haven't noticed yet, which, knowing you, you should have."

"Oh really? Pray tell, whatever may they be?"

"One. I was pretty much right next to you this entire time."

"Well, I knew that."

"Sure you did, Ino." Tenten smirked and tossed her hair in Ino's trademark fashion. "Two. My hair's been out for the past ten minutes, and you haven't said a thing."

Ino's eyes widened and she grabbed Tenten's long, wavy hair, gasping. "Oh my goodness! Your hair's so pretty!" She fluffed Tenten's hair repeatedly, admiring its thickness and shininess and brown-ness. "Neji!" she called, standing up abruptly. "Lookit, Tenten's hair is out!"

Tenten shoved the blonde back into her seat. "Ssh! What do you think you're doing!?" she hissed. "You'll ruin everything!"

"Meh. Fine. What's number three?"

Tenten grinned, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "_Shikamaru_."

Ino grit her teeth and whipped her head around, craning her neck to see over the crowd and cursing in three different languages until she saw her boyfriend, who was sitting at the back of the bus with the angry blonde from Suna, Temari.

Ino didn't like Temari. And she certainly didn't like a laughing, blushing, pretty-looking Temari, especially not when the offender was sitting right next to Shikamaru Nara, who was showing more emotion than he ever did around Ino.

"What is he doing there with _her_?" Ino whispered.

"I dunno. You should ask him."

"No, she should leave."

"That too."

Somewhere at the front of the bus, Anko and Kakashi were talking about the assignment, about how they were off to a small city (which Anko argued was more of a town) roughly fifty miles from the school and that their mission was to obtain a letter from operatives hidden throughout the town and take it to the roof of the city hall, which was to be their meeting point, without being discovered by anyone. The operatives weren't to know that the letter had been stolen, and absolutely nobody could find out they were ninja. Anko and Kakashi made it incredibly clear that they had eyes everywhere and that they'd definitely know if anyone screwed up. But Ino wasn't listening, not really. She had other thoughts whirling around her head, anger bubbling up inside of her and her common sense, which was telling her that she was jumping to conclusions, was dwindling rapidly.

And then finally she couldn't bear it anymore and almost shot up out of her seat to yell at Shikamaru and Temari but suppressed those feelings, instead leaning over to Tenten and asking, "So do you think this involves shopping or not?"

* * *

**A/N: Yosh, that's it, people! I rather liked this chappie, though...I dunno, y'all might not have. Whatev.**

**Anyway, I hope you've all had wonderful holidays, and please review!**


	8. VIII

**A/N: Eeyup. ****Christmas came and went and I got a fat lip, a death threat, and a black eye, but no Naruto ownership.**

**sumtyms: Aww, you. You're making me feel bad about the...ah...tragic destiny awaiting _A Song of Steel and Lies_'s ShikaIno. Lucky for you there will be a little tiny moment this chapter!**

**Quoq: It was _Tenten_ speaking! Not me! I'd _never_ badmouth Gaara-kun. Hmph.**

**And Mr. Hyūga should not wear a paper bag on his head, I presume? Ha, thanks.**

**AWW LOOK AT YOU, ALMOST-BIG-SIS-MICHELLE-CHAN, A'SHIPPIN' ALL MY SHIPS AIN'T YOU WONDERFUL**

**Thank you so much, dahlink, as always.**

**(Heh. They do make good tired/drunk kiddies.)**

**_Okay_! Chapa commenced. No more rambling or replying. Go, me! Ooh, and sumtyms, who I dedicate Chapter 8 to, to make up for future events.**

* * *

"Hey."

Sasuke flicked the offending arm off his shoulder. "What do you want, Sakura?"

She smiled sweetly and leaned over the back of his seat, ruffling his hair and kind of shoving Neji aside. "Didn't you hear? Kakashi-sensei said we'll be working in pairs for this assignment. And I thought maybe you could work with me?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Her smile didn't falter as she put the Uchiha in a headlock. "Not really."

"Fine." Once again, he lifted her arms off of him, this time making sure to sort of push her arms back over the seat.

"Yay!" Her pink-haired head disappeared and he heard her whisper, "Look at me, partnered with Sasuke-kun. Heh. _That_ is how it's done, Hinata-chan. Now go ask Naruto out—maybe we can double-date. Double-spy. Whatever."

"No." Hinata's timid voice had a hint of steel in it as she stiffly said, "H-he won't say yes anyway."

"You never know until you try."

"Actually," said Sasuke, "sorry to interrupt, but I heard Naruto's paired up with Lee."

Sakura glared at him. "Thanks a _lot_, Sasuke Uchiha. Now look what you've done! Hinata's all bummed now."

Hinata sighed. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I'll find somebody else to do a two-hour assignment with."

_Exactly, Sakura, _thought Sasuke. _She doesn't need you to boss her around all the time._

Or maybe she did—he wouldn't know, he didn't speak to Hinata Hyūga and for all he knew, she could have had some sort of crippling disease that made her physically incapable of doing things herself. But that was highly unlikely.

At least, to his knowledge.

* * *

It was several minutes later when anybody in the vicinity of Neji spoke again, and they were nearly there, at the small town's bus stop or wherever the bus was going to park. To Neji's chagrin, it was Hinata, after being informed by Tenten that she'd be doing the assignment with Ino.

"Neji-nee-san," she said, "I-I was wondering...well, since y-you're not doing this with Tenten, and you haven't asked a-anyone else, and I'm not going with anyone, should w-we be partners for the assignment?"

He began to tell her to ask someone else, but looking around, there was nobody for his cousin (or him) to ask. Sakura, who was pretty much her only friend, was with Sasuke, Naruto was with Lee, and Kiba and Shino, her teammates, were partnered with each other. As for him...well, he didn't even know where to start.

"Whatever," he grumbled, trying to convince himself he'd only have to spend two hours with her, that surely she wouldn't preach _too_ much.

It wasn't working.

(Though he figured that if worse came to worse he could always beat her up or put his paper bag back on his head.)

"Thank you, Neji-nee-san," she said, smiling. "You know..."

"I know a lot of things. Which one are you referring to?"

"Oh, nothing." She walked back to her seat and softly added, "I'll tell you later."

* * *

"Alright." Sakura steered Sasuke towards a small café and sat down at one of the small outdoor tables. "What's our plan?"

"A plan?" he asked faintly, sitting down across from her. During the twenty minutes of mission he'd spent with Sakura Haruno, he'd learned that she was a surprisingly adept kunoichi, but he never thought that she'd be one to plan things.

He wished it was his idea to have a plan.

"Yeah, a plan, Sasuke-kun. Like...how do we find the operatives? The ones with letters?"

"I have no idea," he said. "I suppose we could try waiting for someone who acts funny? You know, all suspicious and ninja-like?"

"They wouldn't act that careless. They're professionals," she said, pursing her lips and picking up a packet of sugar, fingering the brightly colored logo. "But...well, okay, maybe we aren't. Hmm." Suddenly she yelped, and the packet came apart in her hands, sugar flying everywhere."Oh, shit," she muttered. "It got in my eye." She gasped. "Eye! Your _sharingan_ can detect chakra, right?"

"Yeah, why-" Then he gasped, too. "Sakura, you're a genius!"

"I am? I _am_!" Sakura beamed and tossed the paper aside. "I _knew_ I should have made the team instead of Ino!"

"Oh, didn't we all," muttered Sasuke.

"Hmm?"

"Nothing."

And so they walked through the streets with Sasuke's _sharingan_ activated (and hidden under a hat) and Sakura's best casual face on. Sasuke couldn't help but feel embarrassed and slightly confused whenever their fingers brushed, but he kept his eyes forward, trained on the sea of gray, waiting for a spot of color to jump out at him.

"Do you see anything?" asked Sakura after fifteen minutes.

"Nope," he sighed.

"Nothing at all?"

"Nada. This is a waste of time."

Sakura shrugged. "It's kinda nice, though. Walking, I mean. With you."

"I suppose." Sasuke jammed his hands in his pockets and turned away...and was rather glad he did. "There!"

"Huh?" To Sasuke's dismay, Sakura's voice rang out loud and clear on the small street, and every pedestrian (including the ninja they were looking for) whirled around to look at her.

"Uh...what do you mean, we have a test tomorrow?" she went on, eyes wide, clearly in a desperate attempt to make things look normal. "We haven't finished the...chapter yet!"

"I mean we've got a history test tomorrow," said Sasuke, playing along. "And keep it down, will you? It's not the end of the world."

"But-"

"C'mon, let's go."

He dragged her towards the first store he saw and they waited by the window until the ninja turned away and continued down the road.

"He'll recognize us next time," said Sakura, snapping an elastic around her long pink hair, tying it up in a bun. "So we should disguise ourselves the best we can."

"And how should we go about doing that?"

She frowned and took his hat off his head, sticking it in her bag. "By giving me your hoodie and messing up your hair, that's how."

He grudgingly obliged, and deactivated his _sharingan_ while he was at it. He also pretended not to notice the look on Sakura's face when he handed her his sweater. It was pretty special.

(Although Sasuke figured it could have been worse. She could have been Ino, who would never let anybody hear the end of it, or she could have been the screamy first year with a major crush on him, who would have undoubtedly shrieked her little head off and fainted dead away.)

Really, Sakura Haruno wasn't that bad, in his opinion.

Which he would never, ever voice.

Sasuke was so caught up in never ever voicing his opinion that he barely noticed Sakura grabbing his wrist and pulling him out the door and down the flagstone street in the direction the ninja had taken. He ended up breaking into a run to keep up with her speed-walking and was almost hit by two buses and a truck since Sakura seemed to find waiting for green lights overrated.

"There he is," she breathed. "Or?"

"Yeah. No yelling this time, 'kay?"

"Whatever. How do we get the letter? Knock him out and run away?"

Sasuke stepped forward quietly and narrowed his eyes. "No. The letter's in the beverage holder on his backpack."

"So?"

"So how good of a pickpocket are you?"

A grin crossed her face and she darted forward, returning mere seconds later with an envelope and a twenty-ryō note in her hands. "Check it."

"Awesome." And he really meant it.

* * *

Neji shot Hinata a terse nod as she clambered over the edge of the roof. They were the first pair (they were even before Anko and Kakashi)to get their letter and make it to the roof of the city hall—_byakugan_ and a pair of sunglasses to hide it made the assignment rather easy.

"So," she said.

"So." He took off his sunglasses and stuck them in his pocket, swinging his legs over the side of the building.

"D-did my dad talk to you a few days ago? He s-said he would."

Neji thought back to the infirmary and Tenten and Hiashi's visit and mumbled, "Sure."

"That's cool. W-what did you guys talk about?"

"None of your business, Hinata-sama." He spat her title with contempt, and didn't bother to hide it, like he once would have done.

"Oh."

Once he would have apologized, too. But those days were long gone, and he'd stopped caring.

"Well, um...good job, Neji-nee-san. We would never have gotten up here if you didn't keep track of those p-people trailing us."

"Hmph. You could stand to try actually _using_ your _byakugan_, Hinata-sama. Instead of just tripping over your own two feet and going on about 'Naruto-kun' all the time. Oh, yes, I heard that."

She averted her eyes. "Anyway," she said faintly. "We're here, nobody else is. Can _I_ talk to you now?"

"Fine."

But then he heard light footsteps crunch along the gravel of the rooftop and they both turned around.

"Hey, kiddos," drawled Anko.

"No time," said Hinata, and pressed a folded-over sheet of pink construction paper into Neji's hands. "For introductions, anyway. B-but this is the bulk of the stuff that Sakura-chan wanted me to tell you."

"And what, pray tell, is this?"

"School stuff. Ninja stuff." She bit her lip. "Stuff about Tenten Zhang."

* * *

"Ino. Plan." Tenten tugged on her friend's sleeve. "Concentration."

"You come first. Cue the rock-throwing."

"I've thrown _several_ rocks, and now she's paying attention. Imma throw the knife now, and you're gonna get the letter, mmmkay?"

"Right." Ino shook her head and made a number of rapid hand seals, and Tenten pulled her newly-stolen steak knife out of her pocket and threw it with all her might at the air next to the operative's head.

"Now," said Tenten, and couldn't help but smile as Ino's _Shintenshin no Jutsu_ hit its target and the operative _totally randomly_ turned around towards Tenten and Ino (who was out cold on a bench) and held out an envelope to the girls.

"I believe you dropped this," said the woman.

"Thank you," said Tenten, and stuck the letter in her pocket. "And have a nice day."

The woman took a few steps back towards the square, and a moment later, Ino _totally randomly _woke up.

"Oh, wait! Lady!" called Tenten, running towards the bewildered-looking kunoichi. "This is yours. You dropped it." She took an empty envelope out of her other pocket and handed it to the woman, who accepted it with a nod.

"Thanks," she said slowly, looking around, but Tenten was already gone.

"Ino? Ino! Where are you?" Tenten whipped her head around, hating to make it so obvious she wasn't just someone in the crowd, but also hating her friend was not on the bench that she was sitting on not sixty seconds prior to the letter exchange. "_Ino_!?"

She didn't get a reply, but she did see Ino's familiar head of blonde hair rapidly make its way through the crowd, the rest of her following suit in a beeline for two other vaguely familiar heads.

_Oh my goodness, _she thought, _Shikamaru, Temari, I hate you two so much._

"Well, _hi there_," she heard Ino say. "Shika-kun."

"Hey, Ino," said Shikamaru as Tenten ran up to the group.

"Who's your friend?"

"This is Temari, she's from Suna—haven't you met? Anyway, I promised I'd show her around and stuff."

"Hn. Hello, Temari."

"Hi," said Temari sweetly, a smile plastered on her face. "Ino, right? I've heard a lot about you."

"That's nice. Did you get the memo that Shikamaru's my boyfriend?"

"Of course!" Temari's hands flew to her mouth. "Oh my goodness, did you think-"

"No comment." Ino shrugged at Temari and grabbed Shikamaru's hand, shoving Temari into Tenten (and Tenten glared at the Suna girl but she seemed to see right through her), and nonchalantly said, "Have you two got the letter yet?"

"No," Shikamaru said, "but we found a few ninja with letters, so we're all set, really."

"That's nice." Ino didn't sound like she meant it and she looked distracted as she rolled her eyes at Temari and kissed Shikamaru goodbye, and the faraway look in her eyes didn't go away as she fell into step beside Tenten. "I hate her," she muttered. "I hate her so much."

"So do I, believe me. But we've got a city hall to get to."

"Right."

An elderly woman in a crocheted shawl had told them that the city hall was the large brick building in the center of the town, and that nearly every large street ultimately led to it. At first the two had followed her advice, but after a few minutes Ino unexpectedly turned a corner and started walking down a small side street instead, and didn't stop when the street faded into an alley.

"It's probably quicker," said Ino, eyeing Tenten's skeptical look. "See, this cuts straight to that street there, which is closer to the city hall."

"Yeah, but you don't have to be a ninja to know that dark alleyways are bad news."

"But we _are_ ninja, so everything will be fine."

"Don't jinx i-_ look out_!"

Tenten pulled Ino out of the way just in time, the shuriken she'd heard whistling over their heads seconds afterward. In turn, Ino batted aside the first attacker's swinging fist and blocked their second punch.

"What the hell?" she demanded.

"I have no idea," breathed Tenten as she elbowed a hooded figure in the stomach and threw them over her shoulder, into a wall. "Muggers?"

"They're too organized," Ino pointed out. "Random teenagers looking for random people wouldn't have this good a plan. Plus, what kind of mugger's got shuriken?"

"Okay, not muggers." One of the people in hoodies lifted their hood and breathed a jet of fire at the girls, which they barely managed to avoid. "Definitely not muggers!"

Neither teen got a moment to breathe or a chance to say anything else as they jabbed and kicked at faces and stomachs and ducked and weaved through an endless array of fancy attacks; but their attackers were just as agile and violent—if not more. Their breathing (and Ino's fancy designer clothing) was soon ragged, their covers were definitely blown, and Tenten's ankle, which she thought was better, was beginning to throb.

And then they stopped. The attackers (or, the three conscious ones) all stood still and nodded to each other, then disappeared.

Shikamaru was by Ino's side in an instant, and he was fretting over her and her jaw had dropped and didn't seem to be moving, Temari stood silently in the background with her hands on her hips, and Tenten's heart was beating a mile a minute as she wordlessly ran her fingers through the ashes from one of the attacker's fireballs and stared at their shuriken.

Eventually she saw something different, something slightly out of place: the flutter of a sticky note in the midmorning breeze. Still silent, she picked it up.

_Boo, _she read. _Did you miss us, Ino Yamanaka?_

And then she fainted.

* * *

**A/N: I'm sorry! This one was bad!**

**Ugh, writing the SasuSaku stuff killed me. And then ShikaIno...review, people. Don't make my sacrifice be in vain!**

**Oh, who am I kidding—it was bad from the start. Pfft. Please review anyway.**


	9. IX

**A/N: ...**

**Hi.**

**Quoq: [This is classified and you got a secret reply in the PM] [Sorry] [But I've learned that revealing one's opinions to the public can be dangerous] [Hehe] [Kill me now Michelle]**

**Merikatdreams: Hi, and thank you so much for reviewing, following, and just plain liking it! Here's an update, hope it doesn't suck!**

**Naruto doesn't belong to me. And this chapter is for ****Merikatdreams, 'cause...well, because.**

* * *

There were things in life that Ino Yamanaka didn't tell anyone.

Those things were mostly tame—they were things like how in her second year at the Konoha Institute, she liked to sit on the roof and throw bits of her lunch at passerby; or the fact that she only pretended to know how to cook to seem cool (but she couldn't even microwave an instant meal without setting something on fire).

But at least one in ten of those things were secrets that were not allowed to come out for very different, and yet very similar, reasons. They were secrets older than time itself (which for some reason, her father had entrusted to _her_), they were secrets that could bring the world to its knees, they were matters of life and death.

And she found one of them bubbling up in her throat as she ran down the steps to the cafeteria, still glassy-eyed and pajama-clad. Heads turned as she passed, but that time, they weren't admirers or friends or friends of admirers: they were people scared witless about the fact that a third year kunoichi at an elite, state-of-the-art, high-security school was on somebody's hit list. Somebody who knew exactly who she was and precisely where to find her.

Tenten was by her side in an instant as soon as she set foot in the cafeteria. She grabbed Ino's hand and walked her to the table where Team Konoha sat slowly, glaring at every staring ninja with her free hand gripping a knife tightly and her head held high. She tried to get Ino to lift her head, too, but it wasn't working too well.

"I hate him," she said as she sat down, talking as if her friends had any idea what was going on. "I hate him so, so much."

"Hate who, Ino?" asked Sasuke gently, as if he cared.

"Sai."

"And who's this Sai person?"

Ino had to admit he did a splendid job of acting like he cared, he really did. So she pretended that she bought the act as she rubbed her temples and kicked at the floor, and in a tremulous voice, began her story.

"I'm gonna say it right now—it was early summer, mistakes were made. Okay? So nobody gets to hold anything against me. Plus, I'm not in the mood.

"Right. We, as in, my dad and I, had just gotten to Gramma's farm out in the country, and I didn't last five minutes, to be honest. I get there, say hello to the cows and such, dump my bag on the floor, and start whining about everything. So what does Gramma do? Well, she does what any self-respecting eighty-year-old woman would do—she gives me directions into town. She said that there were low sales taxes in that county, and that the was some sale. So I leave.

"And that turned out to be the worst mistake of my life. I don't think I lasted _three_ minutes there. I'm just walking along and these guys in weird masks pop up out of nowhere and drag me off. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm kicking and screaming and stuff, but these guys were tough, and besides, nobody was around to hear me anyway.

"You know, as gang hideouts go, I'm pretty sure there are worse ones to be stuck in. It looked a bit like a club, I suppose. And blah, blah, blah, they're all, 'give us all your money and we won't have your guts for garters' and I'm like, 'no,' 'cause I'm not dumb, I pretty much know how to deal with these people. Kinda. Anyway, finally, one of them takes off his mask and inexplicably asks me out.

"His name was—_is_—Sai, and I'm pretty sure he's the first boy who didn't look right through me, or just see me as blonde hair and and blue eyes and a tiny waist. Well, more like I thought he did. So I said yes.

"Actually, boys and girls, _that_ was the worst mistake of my life. Only I didn't realize that until mid-July.

"Mid-July I dumped him, because, well, I was sick of having a boyfriend on the wrong side of the law. Besides, he was boring and a user and once he slapped me.

"He was cool about it at first, but two days later we get a weird letter at the farm. It's from Sai, surprise surprise. Most of it's a load of shit, he's writing this emotional crap about how I allegedly 'meant so much' to him and how I apparently 'walked all over' his heart and oh, now he's 'scarred forever.' All the adults are, you know, being adults—shaking their heads and making those dumb clucking sounds at me, until we read the rest of the letter, where Sai swore he'd do whatever it took to kill me.

"And then we looked outside and the silo was on fire." Ino took a deep, shuddery breath, and sighed, "So...yeah. He hasn't given up yet, either. Everywhere I go, he finds me and there's a bomb or something. And now he's found me yet again."

The reaction of her teammates was the usual. Lots of gasping and "Oh Lord"s and "I'm so sorry"s. Wide eyes, hands to their mouths, and a few attempts at awkward half-hugs. But it still meant a lot to Ino, the fact that they clearly cared, that her story had left some sort of imprint on their minds.

(Well, for Neji and Tenten, anyway. Ino had nothing to say about Sasuke Uchiha.)

Team Konoha sat in silence after that, even when Shikamaru came over to check on Ino and Sakura came over to talk with Sasuke. Not a single one of them said a word. That meant a lot to her, too, until it became clear they were ignoring her stabs at idle conversation as well, and then she deemed it rude and felt worse than she did before.

Finally, Tenten asked, "How did you know that the people yesterday were with Sai? It could have been a coincidence."

"I saw the note, Ten. And I recognized his handwriting. Plus, when is it ever really a coincidence?"

"What was his gang called?" asked Sasuke. "Did they ever tell you?"

"Yeah, Amboo or something along those lines. I think the Akatsuki, that big international gang, did a number on them a few months ago, or something like that. Why?"

"Well, shouldn't we tell somebody? Sarutobi, or Anko, or...well, someone?"

"I don't know." She really didn't.

"Well, you've got all day to think about it. Happy Saturday, people." Neji seemed distracted as he swung his legs over the bench and walked off to toss his trash in the bin and go do whatever it was that Neji did.

Sasuke left shortly after the Hyūga did, leaving the two girls alone to stare at each other and the table and continue sitting in silence.

"Why do bad things happen whenever I love somebody?" Ino moaned eventually, flinging her arms up into the air.

Tenten blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Sai is trying to kill me. Sasuke...who knows what his deal is. I'm giving Shikamaru a week before he starts seeing Temari behind my back. Sakura, who was my best friend for the longest time, went totally crazy last year, and look at her now." She rolled her eyes. "Need I continue?"

"Not unless you wanna." Tenten smiled, almost sadly, and said, "Well, for what it's worth, I'll never do anything horrible to you."

"Aww, thank you. Ice cream?"

"Sure. And pretzels?"

"Definitely."

* * *

"You called, Anko-sensei?"

"I did. Good job figuring that out, Neji Hyūga. Now into the office with you."

She shoved him through the massive oak door and slammed it shut behind her, making it clear there was no way out of Hiruzen Sarutobi's office. It gave the whole affair a sense of business and finality, which Neji wasn't sure he liked.

Sarutobi was standing when Neji reached his desk, which he never, ever did, unless he was at an assembly or something. The principal had even set down his pen, which was unheard of, and if it wasn't already obvious, it was a clear indicator that things were serious.

"Sit, students," said Sarutobi, his slightly gravelly voice raspy and solemn.

Neji, Tenten, and Sasuke sat.

"I'm sure you are all aware of the..._events_ that occurred yesterday. First, I would like to make it clear that the things you hear may not leave school grounds. They are _very_ highly classified."

"Why?" Tenten blurted out.

"Because the ANBU are no joke. They are easily the most powerful unlawful organization in the Land of Fire. Some say they have a shot at the title of most powerful organization in general. And they are angry. Angry at Ino Yamanaka."

"So why are we here?" asked Sasuke. "Don't get me wrong, I care about Ino as much as the next person, believe it or not, but...us?"

"You are Team Konoha, are you not?" Sarutobi raised his eyebrows. "You three are amongst the closest students to Ino. And so, we, the staff, are entrusting you with the mission to look after her. At all times. If you have an assignment off the grounds, you will all keep close tabs on her. Sai and the ANBU have proven they have no problems tracking her down, or attacking while she's being watched by several different elite ninja. She's in danger. A lot of it."

"Well then." Inwardly, Neji was rather frustrated about the whole affair—it was fate, and nobody could do anything about it. There was no point in trying. Of course, he'd be just as sad as Sasuke or Tenten if the ANBU killed Ino, but there was no way around it. That would just be how the universe wanted things to be. But he said nothing. He didn't want to risk Tenten hating him because he didn't care about her best friend, and besides, it was just rude. "How exactly are three third years supposed to protect her if she's in trouble? Like you said, the ANBU aren't a joke."

"Kill them," said Anko. "You're ninja. You kill people left and right, don't you?"

"Um..._no_!" Tenten looked apalled.

"So learn to kill people."

Sarutobi shot her a withering glare and steepled his fingers. "Just do whatever it takes. If the ANBU can find Ino, they can find the rest of us, too. You're dismissed, students."

They bowed and thanked Sarutobi for his time and left the office, Sasuke slamming the door behind them.

"Are we really gonna start going around killing people?" asked Tenten, eyes wide.

Neji and Sasuke shrugged.

"Who cares?" Sasuke stared out the window and heaved a sigh. "It's for the greater good and stuff."

"Forget the greater good," said Neji. "It's probably extra credit, no?"

Tenten crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. "Typical," she muttered, "the boys don't get it. Why am I not surprised?"

Neji and Sasuke watched her stomp off and pretended to ignore the choice words she directed towards them.

"Girls," said Sasuke eventually. "They're _so_ dramatic."

"Totally." Neji stuck his hands in his pockets and began walking back in the direction of the dorms. "And then they complain about us."

* * *

"Assembly?" Sasuke asked Ino as he followed her down the hall. "What for?"

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe the next task of the tournament? It's probably time to announce that so we can train for it and stuff."

"Oh. Wait. You don't think..."

"I don't think you should run for president."

"No, that's not what I'm asking. _Geez_. I was wondering if you think it's about...um...you?"

"Aww, Sasuke-kun, you do care!" A smile crossed her face, but quickly disappeared. "Gosh," she mumbled, "I hope it isn't. I don't want it becoming a huge thing, you know? It's stressy enough as it is. And everybody knows, and everybody's staring, and...stuff." She looked back at him helplessly. "It's like being famous. Only worse."

"Didn't you say you wanted to be famous?"

"That was in the first year. You remembered that?"

"Of course. You went on and on about it. For a week."

"I did? Well, whatever. I don't wanna be famous anymore. Not after what happened to Shizune, remember?"

Sasuke didn't, but he nodded anyway. "If it is about you, you know you're prolly gonna have to talk about it, right?"

"Oh, no. No no no no no." She shook her head vigorously, smacking herself in the face with her long ponytail.

"Just tell them what you told me. You'll be fine."

"But it's none of their _business_. I told you guys 'cause I can trust you and stuff. But Hinata Hyūga and Sakura Haruno? They don't get to know about Sai. Nuh-_uh_."

Sasuke shrugged. "Okay, then tell them an abridged version or something. Say, like, 'I met a person over the summer and stuff happened and now he and his gang are trying to kill me.'"

"That's really smart." She smiled again, and this time it stayed on her face as she stuck her hands in her pockets and continued walking down the hall. "Thank you," she added.

"No prob." He started slowly walking after her. "I'd say 'any time,' but...well, you know."

"I do. I definitely do."

"Wow, that's a first," Sasuke couldn't help but snort.

He supposed he deserved the slap he got.

* * *

**A/N: Yep. That was that.**

**God, I really hated these last two chapters! I don't know why, but it feels like I just can't write at _all_ anymore. Argh! It's so annoying!**

**Please review, and happy New Year!**

**Seriously. I've been ignoring my family nearly all day to write this for you guys. Leave a review. Even though it was terrible.**


	10. X

**A/N: It's a brand new year!**

**I'm sorry it's been so long, but I've been busy. **

**Quoq: Thank you! And thank you! And...sorry? Am I apologizing? You don't have to, so I'm not sure why/if you did. I'm confuzzled.**

**Haha yeah. I'm like a CIA agent or something.**

**yazaru116: Um...thanks!**

**Deidaraluffer: Thanks for the fave!**

**Merikatdreams: Np, and here's your update!**

**Guest: Thank you so much!**

**Purpleprincess1147: D'aww thank you, and here's an update!**

**I'd like to dedicate this to Quoq again, 'cause she's epic and stuff, but then I was gonna try and reach out to everybody I can think of first so I don't sound rude. And then I was like, "to heck with it" and said this one is for Michelle (aka Quoq) and BayneezOne on deviantArt.**

**Fat chance he'll see it though. So I guess it's mostly for you, Michelle-chan. And also, you're a wonderful person, what with LIOL and all. Merci beaucoup, seriously! **

**Oh, and since I haven't dedicated anything to them yet, chapter ten's for yazaru116, too. Lots o' dedications!**

**By the way, I do not own Naruto, and also by the way, I'm sick of saying that.**

* * *

"What do you mean, you're sending Neji and I?" Tenten demanded as she ran after Sasuke. "To do _what_?"

"The next task," said Sasuke calmly. "One of the rules is that only two members of each team gets to compete. Ino and I decided you and Neji should do it."

"And Neji got no say in this?"

"Sure he did. But you weren't awake, so he was a minority. And Ino and I won."

"What about now? I'm awake, and I say you and Ino should do whatever this is. Or Ino and Neji. Or you and Neji! I'm too tired to do things."

"We thought you might say that," came Ino's voice from off to her left. "So I'll let you know that I'm in emotional distress. I'm not doing anything."

"Sasuke and Neji. Done. I'll keep you company up here or whatever."

"Sasuke-kun's got genjutsu classes with Kurenai-sensei from now till December; he just told me." Ino grinned. "Besides, you and Neji are so cute together!"

Tenten whirled around to face her, arching her eyebrow expectantly. "What the _hell_ does that have to do with anything?"

Ino's sly grin widened as she flicked Tenten's forehead and turned the brunette towards the practice dummies and an oddly serious-looking Maito Gai.

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing at all."

"If you weren't my best friend, I would murder you. You know that, right?"

"Yep."

"You know that I may just murder you anyway?"

"What? No, don't do that. That would suck."

"I'm serious, Ino." Tenten put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at the blonde, who'd plastered her best "innocent look" on her face and was idly twisting her ponytail around her finger. "You can't just go around deciding things like that. Like, what if the next task is about 'assessing our abilities to commit cold-blooded homicide' and I have to kill Neji? Or he has to kill me? Or something?" She paused for dramatic effect and brushed aside a dancing strand of chocolate-colored hair as the wind blew it around in front of her face, ticking her off ever so slightly. "We're a team, aren't we? And don't teams tend to involve democracy?"

Ino looked Tenten in the eye, her face now bearing a mask of pity. "Somebody hasn't had her morning tea yet, has she?"

A smile flitted across the brunette's face and she snorted. "Nope."

"Didn't think so."

"Did you get me any?"

"Uh...no."

"So what are you good for?" She swatted Ino on the shoulder, rolling her eyes.

"Absolutely nothing," replied her friend, returning the favor and swatting Tenten's arm. "Just like you! We can be useless together."

"Oh, _you_."

And so they continued, blissfully ignorant about the fact that Gai-sensei, Sasuke, and Neji had long since left them alone in the dwindling dawn sunlight as they ran around on their hands.

Backwards.

(Though when Tenten finally realized what was going on, she was glad she and Ino had been ditched.)

* * *

"Do you know what the next task is?" asked Neji, sitting down next to Tenten on the bench outside the history classroom.

"Task?" echoed Tenten.

"Yeah, you know, the one that we are for some reason doing alone?"

"Oh. That." Tenten stared at the bottle of iced tea in her hands and bit her lip. "Nope. Prolly something awful, though."

"Great," spat Neji under his breath, putting his hand to the bandages wound around his forehead and fingering the slightly worn linen, an old gesture to relive stress he found himself performing more and more as the third year went on. "Like I don't have enough on my plate already."

A wry smile graced Tenten's face. "I'm sure you'll be able to make room for just a tad bit more," she said. Then her smile turned into a small frown, and she stared at Neji in apparent bewilderment, amber eyes narrow. "Wait, what do you mean? Do you have extra homework or something? Is it Hiashi?"

If Neji Hyūga didn't have an image to maintain, if he wasn't Neji Hyūga, he would have cursed Tenten Zhang and her uncanny ability to always know exactly what he was thinking. However, Neji Hyūga _was_ Neji Hyūga and he knew better than to say anything vulgar in public. Which was fortunate for the public (and less so for him).

"Both," he sighed, "although it's mostly the latter. Oh, and Hinata-sama. She and Hiashi-dono keep trying to talk to me. They're saying it's about my father."

"Your father?"

"You mean you don't _know_?" Neji's lips parted slightly in shock and he stared at Tenten incredulously. "Nobody's told you _anything_?"

"Nobody _ever_ tells me anything," replied Tenten dryly. "So why is that a big deal?"

Neji glanced at the wall clock and sighed. "It's a long story, and there's no time to tell it. Remind me to tell you later, though, okay?"

"'Kay. Oh, by the way, do you have Lee's papers? He said you might." She frowned. "Do you have _your_ papers?"

"It's all in my binder," he replied. "What about you? You've got all the books and stuff, right?"

"Of course I have the books and stuff. I even got pictures. We're gonna have the bestest motherloving poster in class." Another smile flitted across her face, but it was soon replaced by a faintly worried look. "Are you okay, though, Neji?"

"Huh?"

"The stress. Hinata and stuff. Are you gonna get a heart attack and die? Don't die. I'd miss you."

He couldn't help but laugh at that. "I'm not gonna _die_, Tenten. But thanks for caring."

* * *

"Boo."

"Eff _off_, Sakura."

Ino watched the pink-ette stride towards the "self-improvement" section of the school library and roll her eyes.

"No," replied Sakura. "I'm conducting library business. Thus I have every right in the world to be here."

"Nobody has the right to stink up school libraries."

"That's the stupidest argument I've ever heard."

"Too bad. Now eff off." Ino crossed her arms and brushed her hair out of her face, setting her history books down as she leaned against the wall. "Actually, scratch that. Why are you here, Billboard Brow? You know that you're gonna find any books about how to cure natural, god-given ugliness, right?"

"I'm here to find self-confidence-boositing tips for Hinata," scoffed Sakura, "because unlike you, I'm a good friend. And plus, I wanna talk to you."

"But I don't wanna talk to you."

"I don't give a flying crap. Look, first of all, I've said it a thousand times—stay the hell away from Sasuke, okay? Geez! I-"

Irritated, Ino sighed. "And _I've_ said it a _million_ times—he's fair game!"

"He is _not_." Sakura smirked. "You weren't with us on that undercover letter-stealing assignment, were you?"

"You weren't at Tenten's party the other night, were you?" lied Ino, fighting the urge to gasp, cry, and/or gauge Sakura's eyes out with sporks. "Because I was. And so was he. And anybody with half a brain can figure out that-"

"That you're lying? Nice try, Ino-pig, but Sasuke likes me."

"He does not."

"Yes he does."

"No."

"Yes, and if you try saying otherwise, I'll tell Shikamaru that you love Sasuke more than you love him."

Ino was glad she wasn't holding anything, because if she was, she'd have dropped it and things would go everywhere, which would not have made her look very good. "You wouldn't _dare_," she said, clenching her fists.

"Oh, but I would."

"If you bring Shikamaru into this," she hissed, "I will cut out your tongue with a butter knife, tear out your small intestine, use it to tie you to some conveniently located train tracks, and drive a train over you. And laugh. Maniacally."

"If I believed you were capable of doing that, I'd be scared. Really. I would. Or maybe I'd get Hinata to film it, so she could give it to Sarutobi or someone and you would get to spend the rest of your days locked up in some mental ward in jail. But I know you, Ino. And I know you'd never cut out my tongue with a butter knife; especially not if you were gonna tear out my intestines, too."

"I so would."

"If I had no tongue, you wouldn't get to hear me scream."

Ino cursed under her breath, recomposed herself, and said, "Fine. Intestines first, then tongue. Easy."

Sakura rolled her eyes again and flipped her hair. "Whatever. Secondly...when is all of this gonna end?"

"When I kill you. Wait, what are you talking about?"

"The death threats, the arguments, the hating each other...is it ever gonna be over? Are we ever gonna, like, be friends again?" Sakura looked at Ino helplessly. "Or are we gonna be enemies 'till we graduate or grow up or whatever?"

"I don't know." Ino averted her eyes, staring at a spot on the floor. "I guess when one of us either gives up on Sasuke or gets him. And the other one accepts that."

"Hmph. You know it's gonna be me, right? Who gets him?"

Ino gritted her teeth and slapped her. "What the hell is wrong with you? There was progress going on."

"What the hell is wrong with _you_? Shit! That hurt!" Sakura put a hand to her cheek and gave Ino the finger, tucked a book under her arm, and stomped towards the door. "Ugh. Go die in a hole, Yamanaka. At least that way I won't have to hear you whining when Sasuke asks me to marry him."

And then she was gone.

And then Ino was crying.

Because for the millionth time, a chance to make up with Sakura had slipped through her fingers and she'd acted like a bitch about it and Sakura had gotten the best of her. As usual.

Eventually, Sasuke came up to help her sit up and ask what was wrong, but when he didn't get an answer other than "I hate Sakura" he beckoned Tenten in and left without so much as a "Bye."

Ino didn't really pay attention to either of them; she just sat on the floor with her history book opened to page seventy-seven and Tenten kneeling next to her murmuring words of comfort.

It was not the best day of Ino's life.

But the thought that really depressed her was the fact that it certainly wasn't the worst.

* * *

Sasuke sighed on his way up to his dorm, shaking his head and kicking at the floor. Babysitting Ino (or whatever his job technically was) had really taken its toll on him, more so than it had on the other two members of Team Konoha. Even though Neji and Tenten did more work than he did, he was the whiny-ass brat about it.

It was just like their first time training under Gai-sensei, when Sasuke had for some reason subconsciously got it into his head that a whiny attitude was a cool attitude.

Which made no sense.

"Hey, Sasuke-kun," said the unmistakable voice of Sakura Haruno from somewhere behind him.

"Hello, Sakura." He spun around to face her and shot her a grin. He'd really grown to like her over the past day or two, so it wasn't odd for either of them to hag out between classes or make small talk during lunch. "Wassup?"

"Oh, nothing. Girl drama. You?"

"Not...much," he said slowly, knowing anything having to do with Ino would anger the pink-haired girl to no end. "Kurenai-sensei was sick today, so I was pretty much free all day. That was cool."

She laughed. "And for _some_ reason, you couldn't find the time to help Naruto and I with the team history project?" Pulling a face, she elbowed him lightly. "Or, you know, help me?"

"Did Naruto not do anything?"

"Nope."

"That's sad. What's the project on? Maybe I can help."

"Jashinism. The presentation is tomorrow. And we have...um...next to nothing done?"

"Alright, I'll see what I can do," he said. "Library, after dinner, okay? Take the poster and we'll finish it up."

"Is this a date?" asked Sakura, stunned. Sasuke's face flushed.

"_No_," he replied, jamming his head into his collar and his hands into his pockets. "I'm just being helpful."

* * *

**A/N: Pfft filler. Short short bad bad. Please review anyway.**


	11. XI

**A/N: It's...uh...still a relatively new year. Sorry, folks.**

**Cel: Oh my goodness, you wonderful little person, you! Thank you so much! (And just between you and me although a lot of people have prolly realized this by now, I loathe SasuSaku and it pains me to write it. Unfortunately, just like the ShikaIno, it's a plot device. Thing. Whatever.) Anyway, thank you so, so much. **

**Quoq: Woohoo! *dances* Um...because she is! The way I see it, pre-Shippuden (which this story is more like), she doesn't have a lot of depth and I know losing a bestie is really hard, and...yep. She's cracking, so to speak. Ooh! I love 'em too! And...I don't know. Because he's silly that way? Because everyone likes Ino? Hmm. Aww, thankies and you're welcome!**

**Purpleprincess: D'aww thanks for being so supportive; your reviews make me so happy! Here's an update. You deserve it.**

**Whelp, I kinda hate to say it, but this one is dedicated to all of you, readers. I love you all, in a non-creepy way. But really. It's been ten chapters! And some of you have read all of them!**

**Also, I have too many people to dedicate things to, and I'm losing track of y'all because you're all awesome.**

**Naruto does not belong to me!**

* * *

_What the hell am I doing with life?_

Sasuke knew he should have been paying attention to Kin (who, as one of the best genjutsu users of the student body, was subbing for Kurenai) as she explained the usage of genjutsu aided by ninja tools or something along those lines, but he really didn't feel like listening. And so he didn't. He simply sat on a chair and stared into space, itching to try his hand at actual genjutsu, instead of just the classroom stuff.

Except he wasn't ready to do anything but classroom stuff.

So he got to sit and listen and take the odd note. It was rather dull, in his opinion (which he wished he could voice without running the risk of having his angsty classmate behead him).

"Okay, Uchiha," said Kin, taking several senbon out of her pockets and cracking her knuckles, "I'm getting bored. You are, too, right?"

"Very much so."

"Great. So now it's time for the fun stuff. Yes," she announced haughtily, eyeing Sasuke's skeptical look, "genjutsu can be fun. Kurenai-sensei and I have come up with a little experiment we're gonna do, aight? It's real easy. One of us, whichever person is present, meaning me, will cast an illusion, and you're gonna break it using your own genjutsu, got it?"

"I can't do genjutsu," Sasuke said, baffled.

"Well, there's a first for everything. Ready...set...go!"

Years of genjutsu-avoidance training flew out the window as Sasuke stared, enthralled, at Kin as she threw her belled needles at the wall and they began playing an eerie tinkly melody; the shrill, almost haphazard jingles (for some strange reason) filling Sasuke's mind with thoughts and images of demonic Yuletide elves eating children and manically laughing about it. Then his vision grew blurry, and when it cleared, there were multiple Kin Tsuchis standing at the front of the empty classroom, each one sporting faintly glowing eyes and an evil smirk.

"Get ready, Uchiha," they all said in echoing voices. "Here I come."

The Kins all whipped their heads forward after a terse count to three. Their long black hair formed inky rivers of shadows when it hit the floor, which rippled and bubbled and began to submerge the room in darkness, lapping at the walls like waves on the seashore. While Sasuke's eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom, he was still hopelessly lost in the endless expanse of murk, and thus he found himself spinning around in circles and shouting like a wayward child, even though the landscape was all the same and the caliginosity effortlessly ate his words milliseconds after they came out of his mouth.

After what seemed like an eternity, the landscape changed ever so slightly as a humanoid shape came walking through the dark, the shadows curtaining its silhouette dissipating in swirls and eddies as the person walked forwards, in a beeline for Sasuke. At first, he couldn't figure out why his stomach felt cold and heavy with dread as he watched the mystery human approaching, but then he realized as caught the glint of a _sharingan_ he knew all too well—it was none other than his brother, Itachi Uchiha's, mangekyō_ sharingan_, which he hadn't seen since the night of his parents' death. Part of him wondered how Kin knew about Itachi, another just wanted to scream.

"Did you miss me, Sasuke?" asked Itachi softly, drawing a tantō from somewhere within the folds of his robe and pressing it against the younger Uchiha's gut.

And then Sasuke _did_ scream. He screamed as loud as he could, another thing he hadn't done since witnessing his older brother murder his mother and father. He screamed for so long his throat began to burn and tears leaked out of his tightly shut eyes. He screamed with all the furies of hell behind him, all his pent-up anger, sadness, and pain being directly translated into ear-splitting noise.

And then it stopped. Everything. The shadowy world collapsed in on itself, taking Itachi with it, leaving Sasuke curled up in a ball on the linoleum floor at the feet of a heavily panting Kin Tsuchi.

"What happened to using genjutsu!?" she demanded. "You just stood there crying for half an hour! You didn't even _try_!"

"I-Itachi," he stammered, his head swimming. "Y-you made Itachi appear. How did you even know about him?"

"Ninja information cards," she sighed. "You can have mine. I don't need them, and besides, they're more useful to you, being Team Konoha and all. And...well. That experiment didn't work nearly as well as Kurenai-sensei thought it would. Class dismissed, Uchiha. And for what it's worth..." She knelt down and grabbed his arm, hauling him up and sitting him down at a desk. "I'm sorry."

* * *

"Teach me taijutsu."

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard me. Teach me taijutsu."

"This is all very sudden, Tenten." Neji looked up from the floor of one of the Institute's many gymnasiums to his teammate as she stood with her arms folded and a no-nonsense expression on her face. "Why do you want to learn taijutsu? You're talented as is."

She shrugged and walked over to him, the "thud" her footsteps made echoing each time one of her bare feet hit the hard, wooden floor. "I want to be prepared for the next task," she said. "Who knows? What if there's fighting involved, and we're not allowed to bring things with us?"

"Fair enough. But you know that the taijutsu I do requires the _byakugan_ and such, right?"

"I don't care. It's something. Besides, you're my last hope—Lee and Gai both refused to teach me anything."

Neji opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off by Sakura Haruno chirping, "Ooh, lookit, Hina-chan! Tenten and your cousin! This will be an excellent time to practice your assertiveness!" in her stupid high-pitched squeal and said pink-ette dashing over with his fellow Hyūga's wrist in her hand as she dragged the small girl over to Tenten and him.

"H-hello, N-Neji-nee-san," stammered Hinata, averting her eyes. "And Tenten, o-of course."

"Goodbye, Hinata," said Neji coolly, with a nod of assent from Tenten. "And you too, Sakura, of course."

"Rude," scoffed Sakura with a dramatic toss of her long hair. "Look, Hyūga, Zhang, just humor us, will you? Hinata wants to become more self-confident-"

"What in the world does that have to do with us?" Tenten blurted out.

"-and a lot of books recommend practicing and/or showcasing your natural talents," Sakura went on, "so we figured that Hinata's _juken_ ought to count as a natural talent. Kekkei genkai and whatnot. Now we were just looking for people for her to spar with, and here you two are! Tenten-chan, you wouldn't mind if we stole Neji for a bit, do you?"

Tenten eyed Sakura coldly and arched an eyebrow. "I'd mind very much. He and I are busy. Wait, why Neji? Am I not good enough?"

"Maybe you're not. What are you gonna do about it?"

"Punch you?"

"Oh my goodness," spat Sakura. "Tenten, you are so dramatic. _I'll_ fight with you while Neji and Hinata do their thing, okay? Happy?"

"No. But whatever."

Neji was sad to see Tenten leave, especially when he realized that he was now virtually alone with Hinata Hyūga—someone who he knew that he should never spend more than ten seconds in close proximity with. Yet there he stood, in front of his cousin, watching as she fidgeted with her jacket and struggled to form a complete sentence.

He hated her so, so much.

"Before we begin, Hinata-sama," said Neji, "there's something I'd like to say. It's been bothering me for quite a while, you see."

"G-go ahead, Neji-n-nee-san."

"You're really not cut out to be a ninja."

The entire room (even the people just stepping in stopped their talking mid-sentence, even Tenten and Sakura paused their fight) fell silent at his statement; jaws dropped and eyes widened as heads turned to stare at the young Hyūga prodigy and the young Hyūga heir as they stared at each other.

"What?" Hinata gasped.

"You heard me," said Neji, the words bubbling up his throat, almost tripping over each other in their haste to be free. "You're _not_. You're all sweetness and light, lacking the spirit and determination a ninja needs to succeed. You're a peacemaker, not a troublemaker; you're easily led, not a leader."

"I d-don't understand," Hinata murmured, but Neji barely heard her.

"And you have no self-confidence, nor will you ever. You've got a world-class inferiority complex, and I know you're uncomfortable in your position as heir to the clan. You'd be more than happy to sit somewhere at the bottom of the social and economical food chain, letting people walk all over you, using you as they please, because oh, you're just not good enough. But the fates have handed you a different destiny, and you can't grow out of it. It's yours, even if you don't want it. Even if you don't deserve it."

"You're wr-wrong," said Hinata in a trembling voice. "I _do_ want it. My life is my life. I am good enough for it. D-don't decide things for me, Neji-nee-san. _Don't_."

"A leopard can't change his spots, Hinata. I know the courage you're displaying is a bluff. I know you're the sheltered little baby of the main branch. I know that a failure always fails. Your weak personality will never become strong."

Hinata clenched her fists and curled her toes in her sandals. "No," she softly said, a tear dangling from her eyelashes and another slowly streaming down her cheek. "I r-really want to change myself. I kn-know I c-can. I will become a worthy heir of the clan."

"You won't, Hinata-sama. I've seen many things with my _byakugan_. I know human nature. For some reason, you just don't understand that we all live within boundaries others have set for us. It's unchangeable. It's fate. I-"

"Shut _up_, Neji Hyūga!"

And just as everyone stopped what they were doing to listen to Neji, everyone whirled around to stare at Naruto as he stood scowling in front of the doors, hands cupped around his mouth to make his yelling even more obnoxious and his entire body shaking in obvious anger.

"She's right, dammit! You can't just go around arbitrarily deciding things about other people! C'mon, Hinata, beat this douchebag up!"

Neji bit back all manner of withering retorts he longed to spit at the two of them, instead opting to silently observe the change in his cousin's behavior: the way she stood up straighter, the faint pink twinge that colored her face, the decisiveness in her movements as she wiped away her tears and sank into a fighting stance.

"Th-thank you, N-Naruto-kun," she said. "Neji-nee-san, I'm done running. I'm done being a f-failure. And I mean that."

"Fine. Then I won't be held responsible for what happens here, Hinata-sama."

He sincerely hoped that his cousin heard his last sentence as the two of them sprang into action, ducking and weaving and jumping and jabbing and squinting through their all-seeing eyes as he effectively hit all the necessary tenketsu to control her chakra flow without too much effort and she kept on weakly slapping at him him with her empty palms, clearly unaware all her attacks were next to useless. Yells filled the air all around them, nearly everyone cheering Hinata on, voices going on about how much she'd improved and how proud of her they were. (As far as Neji could tell, he had a grand total of one fan. Her name was Tenten Zhang and he had never been happier that she knew so many vile things to say about people, especially when one of those people was named Hinata Hyūga.) And despite all of the distractions and discouragements, the two soldiered on.

Finally, when it seemed for all the world that Hinata was about to deliver a killing blow, Neji found the opening he'd been looking for and jammed his palm into her chest, knocking her back and making her begin coughing up blood uncontrollably. Through his ragged breathing he managed to straighten his back and snicker at the defeated girl's pathetic appearance, smirking at her with his arms crossed.

"I really hope that boosted your self-confidence a bit, dear Hinata-sama," he said. "Although, smashing victories such as yours really tend to do just that, so I have no doubts it did."

"You're a monster," Sakura growled, picking up her friend's arms and dragging her out of harm's way.

"You're the monster," countered Ino, who had been silent the entire time. "This was your idea, and we all knew Neji had unfinished business with her. Aren't you her best friend? I mean, best friends don't usually try to get their friends killed." She paused and mock-frowned, putting a finger to her chin. "Of course, you don't know much about best-friendship, do you?"

"Oh you little-"

"Enough," snapped Tenten. "Both of you, shut up. Someone go get Hinata taken care of. Neji, take a breather and then we'll go train or whatever, okay? The rest of you, just go away."

Taking a few last glances at the unconscious Hinata, the crowd began to file out of the doors. Slowly but surely the gym emptied out, leaving an exasperated Tenten, a lightly panting Neji, and a somebody who Neji presumed was Naruto all alone in the cavernous room.

"Shall we, Tenten?" asked Neji after a moment. She took a last look at the bloodstains on the floor, exhaled, and began to nod, only to be cut off by Naruto barging in between the two of them.

"That wasn't okay," he spat.

"Neither is your face."

"Oh, you wanna try me, Hyūga?"

"Come at me, bro."

"Boys!" Tenten shouted. "Oh my goodness, you two! You're acting like Ino and Sakura. Naruto, I can't speak for you, but Neji, you're more mature than that! Honestly!"

They looked at her and back at each other, taking slow steps away from one another.

"Whatever," grumbled Naruto after a minute. "But mark my words, Hyūga. Next time you try to hurt someone I care about..." He knelt down and placed his hand in the pool of blood, and pointed his tightly clenched fist at Neji. "I'll kill you."

* * *

Tenten yawned as she sat down next to Neji on a battered couch in the library, raising an eyebrow at Sasuke.

"Team meeting?" she asked, slumping onto Neji's shoulder and drawing her knees up to her chest. "Why do we need to have a team meeting now? I'm tired. It's midnight. And I'm tired."

"I don't care," Sasuke said. "Everyone here is tired, Tenten, but note you're the only one complaining."

She glared at him. "Says you."

"Tenten," warned Neji. "Just...don't. There's been enough violence today."

Ino elbowed Sasuke. "Same goes for you, Sasuke-kun," she said. "No douchebaggery."

"What_ever_," groaned Tenten and Sasuke simultaneously. She yawned widely and he sat forward in his chair, procuring a stack of cards from somewhere behind him.

"I called this meeting because I got some cool stuff that I don't want the other teams to get their hands on," he announced. Ino perked up.

"Drugs?" she asked.

"Uh...no. Kin gave these to me. They're called ninja information cards or something like that-"

"What do they do?" Neji interrupted.

"They give you information on ninja," Sasuke said slowly. "Duh. So, with the mysterious second task around the corner, shall we find out some stuff about random ninja?"

The rest of the team looked at each other and shrugged.

"Okay," said Tenten. "Um...is there are a card on Emiko Yuki the whiny-ass brat?"

Sasuke leafed through the cards and pulled one out, tapped it twice, and placed the card on a coffee table, sitting back and watching as all sorts of little holographic images and graphs popped up.

"Emiko Yuki," he read aloud. "Born into the Yuki clan of the Land of Water but was sent to live in the Land of Wind at the age of four, when it became clear she was incapable of using the traditional ice techniques of her clan. However, under the training of the Wind ninja, she proved to possess an array unique snow powers, which are sometimes compared to her teammate Gaara's various sand jutsu. She enrolled into the Suna Academy at age eleven, like many children her age, and aside from the occasional killing spree, lived a relatively normal life. The end." He raised an eyebrow. "Huh. She's kinda boring."

"Wait," Neji pointed out. "How do we know that this stuff is true?"

"We find a Neji Hyūga one and see if it's accurate?"

"Okay." He snatched the cards and drew out one that Tenten guessed was his, holding the small piece of paper close to his face as he read it and crumpled it up afterwards, tossing it at Sasuke's head. "I hate my life," he grumbled. "And I hate it more when people know about it."

"Ooh! Let's read Tenten's card!" Ino chirped.

"No."

"Okay, let's read yours, Sasuke!"

"No."

She went on like that for a while, until she found the card of an Iwa boy named Deidara and began reading that card aloud, laughing loudly at every other sentence (even the non-funny ones). Finally, after Ino's second reading of Deidara's biography, Sasuke snatched the cards back and stuck them in his pocket, scowling.

"They're important ninja tools, people," he grumbled. "They're not funny."

"Yes they are," Ino giggled. "Like, who challenges people to _sculpting_ contests to settle important debates?"

"Okay, maybe that was funny. But the rest of it gets to be serious."

"'Aside from the occasional killing spree,'" Ino went on, in a flat, monotonous impression of the Uchiha, "'she lived a relatively normal life.'"

"Fine," mumbled Sasuke in apparent defeat, "maybe that gets to be funny, too."

Tenten grinned. "But not the rest of it."

"No."

"Glad I asked."

Although, secretly, she wasn't.

* * *

**A/N: Gah! A longer-than-normal chappie, 'cause I start school again soon and updates might be weird. Sorry I couldn't improve the quality of the writing for y'all, but oh well.**

**Also sorry about how stupid this one was. I was really bored. I should never, ever write when I'm bored again—like, what was this even about? I don't know.**

**Please review!**


	12. XII

**A/N: Warning—this chapter will suck. Especially for you, fellow SasuIno shippers slash Ino fans. Oops, was that a spoiler? *shrugs***

**Purpleprincess1147: "Ugh, school" is right. Thanks for all your support though!**

**Quoq: D'aww thank you!**

**I dedicate this chappie to misspandalily, who has followed and faved both this story and me, and is a wonderful person who I hope I get to know more and all that jazz.**

**Naruto is so totally mine. Not.**

* * *

"Ino, can we talk for a bit?"

"Is this about Sai?"

"Not really. Well...kind of. Just come with me?"

Ino shrugged at Tenten, who she was sitting next to, and followed Asuma-sensei down the hall and up the stairs, towards Anko's office. Ino rather liked Anko's office and its walls covered in maps and its comfortable armchairs (instead of the hard swivel chairs most teachers' offices had) and its snakeskin rug, but unless she was being marched off to talk décor, she had no idea what was going on.

Anko greeted them by her door and opened it for the two of them, which Ino supposed should have been her first sign something was wrong. Ino knew that Anko-sensei never exerted more effort than absolutely necessary, which involved a lot of ordering people to bring things to her even if she was two feet away from the object; or ordering people to do simple things that she should have been more than capable of doing, like opening doors or shutting them or really performing any basic door-action.

"C'mon in, Asuma, Ino," said Anko. "Ino, can I get you anything? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Anything to eat?"

"Um...I'm...fine," Ino answered slowly, furrowing her eyebrows at her teachers. "Why?"

Anko said nothing more as she closed and locked the door. For some reason, the lock's small "_click_" stood out from the other faint sounds and stuck in Ino's brain. That, she reasoned, was the second sign something was afoot—for her Ino Yamanaka was infamous for being the least observant person on the planet. Yet there she was, paying attention to the sound of a locking door at eight in the morning as she sat, stifling a great number of yawns, in a worn plaid armchair with her knees drawn up to her chest and her hair out for the first time in days since she'd lost her hairtie the previous night and didn't have time in the morning to find a new one.

"He was a great man," said Asuma solemnly after a long pause, placing a hand on Ino's shoulder. She turned around to face him, narrowing her eyes.

"Who? What's that even supposed to mean? I don't get anything, people."

Anko sighed and slid off her perch on the corner of her desk. "Asuma, just...let me." She took a deep breath and buried her face in her hands and then averting her eyes, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the blonde, for reasons she couldn't fathom. "Ino," she said softly, "your father is dead."

Ino blinked. "What?" she incredulously asked after a moment, her voice wobbly. "You're joking, right? He can't be dead. He _can't _be."

"They found his body last night," Anko went on. "He had three puncture wounds in his throat and half of a knife blade stuck in his chest. And the killer left a note. Would you...like to see it?"

Still dumbstruck, Ino nodded. Asuma handed her a small square of crumpled blue paper, and after seeing her failed attempts to unfold it with her trembling hands, opened it for her.

"Well," the note said in dark red ink, "he's not you, but we're getting there."

And then an "XOXO," because signatures were so last season (at least he always said they were) and it obviously wasn't enough for him to murder her father, he had to mess with her head, too.

"Sai," she breathed, a tear leaking out of her eye and falling on to the paper, blurring the ink.

(He would have found that poetic. A symbol for yet another thing stepping its toes into her once-perfect world and ruining just a little bit more; or something along those lines. She couldn't believe she used to love him.)

After that, her senses blurred and all she could do was sit in her chair, trembling and crying, with Anko awkwardly rubbing her back and Asuma whispering incomprehensible words of comfort. Eternities came and went; finally Tenten poked her head in, asking for her—those were the first clear words since Anko offering her the note—and Ino stood up on weak, shaky legs and left the office wordlessly. It took another dozen eons (or at least what felt like them) for the two of them to reach their dorm and for Ino to snap completely, dissolving into a hysterical fit.

Tenten's tears were silent, and a part of Ino could see she was doing her best to hide them as she held the blonde close and stroked her hair and listened to her screams and murmured, "It's gonna be okay" over and over. So she pretended not to notice that her best friend was crying and instead whispered, "How do you know it's gonna be okay?"

"Because I lost both my parents this summer," Tenten said, "and look at me. I'm okay, right?"

"Oh, Ten, I'm so sorry!" Momentarily Ino forgot her own problems and felt that their situation was reversed: she was the one holding Tenten; her tears were being shed for her friend's loss as opposed to her own. But then reality came swooshing in again and then it was back to normal, just minus Tenten's whispering.

"Alright, sistah," said Tenten eventually, standing up and holding her hand out to Ino. "You think you're up to getting lunch?"

"Lunch?" Ino echoed, taking Tenten's hand and slowly pulling herself up. "Isn't it, like, nine in the morning?"

"No, it's noon."

_Noon_. She'd been crying for roughly four hours. She felt a pang in her chest as she nodded plaintively, realizing for the first time just how badly she took the news. What kind of kunoichi was she, if she couldn't cope with the death of another ninja...even if that ninja was her father?

_A good one,_ she told herself firmly. Because more sobbing about how much life sucked certainly wouldn't help her case.

* * *

Despite his demeanor (and contrary to what many people thought of him), Sasuke actually had his first kiss (and the greater part of his love life) all planned out. It was going to be over a romantic dinner on Yule's Eve with candlelight and cocoa and all that jazz. It was going to be with some new person he'd met somewhere, who he'd loved for a while and who loved him back with no questions asked. It was going to be according to plan.

It wasn't going to be with Sakura Haruno in Room 230 on the second floor as they laughed about their classmates and made idle chitchat about their surprisingly successful history project.

The worst part, though, was that he liked it and he almost definitely liked her.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura giggled, "you...kissed me!"

"And you kissed me back," he mumbled, face burning. He felt Sakura lace her fingers through his as she flicked his forehead and laughed some more.

"But you're _Sasuke_," she pointed out, coyly smiling.

"Yeah."

They sat in silence, grinning at each other, for a few minutes (or maybe it was a few hours—who knew?) after that. Sasuke watched the shafts of sunlight filtering in through the small window set into the far wall and the dust motes dancing their idle little dance in the light out of the corner of his eye, thoughts a whirlwind in his head. Why did he have to go and...do that? Why'd he have to be so careless? Were Tenten and Ino and Neji and them gonna kill him? He was too young to die. Plus, Sakura would probably burn him at the stake or something.

Even though he was already dead.

He'd be double-dead.

That would suck.

"...has to say about this, right, Sasuke-kun?"

"Uh...what?"

"Silly." She stuck her tongue out at him and giggled again. "I was just asking what you thought Ino'll say about this."

He put his head in his hands. "Oh, lord...she's probably gonna gauge my eyes out with sporks."

"Don't worry, I'll love you anyway."

"_Love_ me?" His eyes widened, and he blurted out, "Since when do you love me?"

Sakura's slight blush became a furious tomato red. "Since always," she said, and abruptly stood up, dragging Sasuke towards the door. "Anyway...so are we, like, boyfriend and girlfriend now or what?"

"I suppose we are." He grinned. "Never thought I'd hear myself say that."

* * *

_Oh, no,_ thought Tenten. _Oh, gods, no._

"So why are you crying, Ino-pig?" asked Sakura (in what Tenten supposed could have passed as a hello if the person being greeted was deaf and had quite an imagination) as she slid onto the bench opposite the two of them, slowly twisting a strand of her long hair around her finger and batting her eyelashes innocently. "Finally realize what a piece of shit you are?"

Ino shot her a baleful scowl and went back to halfheartedly picking at her salad, not bothering with a hello at all.

Tenten rolled her eyes. "It's none of your business, Sakura."

"Of course it is, Tenten Zhang," Sakura said coldly. "Ino used to be my best friend, didn't you know?"

"'_Used_ to' being the operative term here, no? Face it, Sakura, nobody likes you and it's _none of your business_."

She seemed to ignore the first part, instead turning to the blonde and demanding, "What the hell happened?"

"I just received news that my father has _died_," Ino snapped after a long pause with lots of fist-clenching and gritting of teeth. "Okay? Happy now? Good. Now _fuck off_."

"You _bitch_!" muttered Sakura before recomposing herself and saying, "Oh. Whatever. Too bad, so sad."

A gasp escaped Tenten's lips despite her efforts to maintain a cool, calm, and indifferent exterior and before she knew it she'd fished a throwing knife out of her pocket and chucked it at Sakura's shoulder, instantly staining most of the girl's snow-white blouse sleeve a deep red.

"You're the bitch," spat Tenten, shaking with rage and fear of being expelled or something (for as everyone knew, bloodshed was forbidden in the cafeteria). "How can you...what...you don't _care_!? You don't _care_ that someone has just _died_? You don't care that on top of all the things in her life right now, Ino has just lost her father? You said it yourself, hypocrite—you two were _best friends_. And now...now..." Tenten's voice trailed off and she shook her head. "You're unbelievable," she finished with a deep, shuddery breath. "Honestly. Un-flipping-believable."

Sakura seemed unfazed by Tenten's outburst. Calmly pressing a napkin to her bleeding shoulder and examining the nails of her free hand, she said, "'_Were_' being the operative term here," in a poor imitation of the brunette's voice. Then she cleared her throat. "I'm a busy girl," she went on with a shrug. "What with, oh, you know, homework, helping Hinata with her self-esteem, life...and, as of half an hour ago, dating Sasuke."

Tenten and Ino looked at each other in horror, mouthes agape, and before either of them could scoff or yell or splutter in disbelief, Sasuke Uchiha himself plunked down next to Sakura on the bench, put an arm around her shoulders, and asked his teammates, "What's up?"

"We were just _leaving_," Tenten growled, snatching up her tray and hissing, "C'mon, Ino."

The blonde was shivering violently and muttering profanities under her breath the entire way to the trash can and back up to their dorm; and once they were upstairs she burst into tears again. Tenten developed a blinding headache shortly after that, which most people would have blamed on all the sobbing going on but which she decided to blame on Sakura Haruno's awfulness and all the crap the universe dumped on Ino Yamanaka, both of which twisted her stomach in knots and made her irate and miserable and feel oh so helpless, because without godly powers, there was nothing she felt she could do.

* * *

"There you are, Neji. I've been looking for you."

"And I've been avoiding you, Uncle." He whirled around and glared at Hiashi. "Unlike some people, I don't want to ruin a perfectly good Saturday with lies and preaching and whatever else it is you main-branchers do."

"Neji Hyūga, I need to speak to you."

"I don't care!" Neji threw his hands up and brought them down, burying his face in his hands. "I don't," he murmured. "So you can piss off."

Hiashi waved his hand and instantly Neji's eyes were burning and it felt like someone was stabbing his curse mark over and over again. "Well, neither do I, then," said the head of the Hyūga clan. "I'll just make you listen. Hell, I should have just done this from the beginning, but your dear cousin Hinata seemed to believe that this was a better way to approach things."

Neji said nothing and just glared some more (he was rather good at that). His uncle seemed to take that as an invitation, beginning to launch into a long story about his father which the young prodigy paid about zero attention to. He was relieved beyond words when Tenten came walking down the hall and dragged him off towards the stairwell, shouting over her shoulder that they were on "Team Konoha business" and that she was "really so sorry to interrupt."

(Though she couldn't have made it clearer she wasn't.)

* * *

**A/N: I WANNA GAUGE MY EYES OUT WITH _SPORKS_.**

**Anyway. Sorry about this chapter everyone but everything' setting up future events and whatnot. **

**Please review, people. **


	13. XIII

**A/N: You people are too cute. I mean, this thing's officially got over thirty reviews, and I never even expected ten!**

**Anyway.**

**Cel: Aww, you. I'm so sorry. *pats back* And in my...what's the opposite of defense? Anyway, in my [opposite of defense] I really should have found a better way to write this. *holds out rusty sporks* We can poke the chapter together. But thank you.**

**misspandalily: *bows* What you said.**

**She is, isn't she? Goodie—didn't know if a bunch of Sakura fans were gonna pop up out of the snow (like daisies! Chapter-dedication and a cookie if you get that reference) and flame because of that, but I'm glad you support me. 'Nyway, I defoo second all you said, and...yep!**

***hangs head in shame* I know, I know. Wrote that way once for dialogue and it became an awful bad habit. I'll definitely keep your advice in mind, though, so thanks for that; and apropos the second bit, thanks for that, too, and I'm happy I'm able to convey emotions and such with writing.**

**Quoq: *hands bucket* Here, I've already used it, but maybe it can be a community barf bucket or something. In other words, yeah, he's kinda a bitch that way.**

**I'm with you. That's all I can say. (Y'all may have noticed I don't exactly have a way with words.)**

***also caps locks* DEFOO BUT THANKS FOR THAT VEILED COMPLIMENT. ANYWAY SHE'LL BARELY BE IN THIS CHAPTER SO YEAH.**

**Guest: Thank you~ And...yeah...he was fated to die the moment he stepped into my story. *nods solemnly* Wait...what did I just say? Oh well. Thanks anyway.**

**Isn't she, though? Wait until I start writing Hinata more. *whistles to draw attention away from the blatantly obvious spoiler***

**Uppie! Brilliant word, can I use that? Anyway, thanks so much. Here's the mentioned "uppie," hope it's better than last chapter. uwu.**

**xoxo ("—Gossip Girl." There's no reward for understanding that reference, people, so don't bother asking for one. :P)**

**Purpleprincess1147: Yeah...I'm really giving her a hard time. I should stop being a bully, ne?**

**Wow! I should start an army with you, Sakura-haters!**

**But all in all, thanks and here's an _UPPIE_. (HEEHEEHEE I USED "UPPIE" IN A SENTENCE)**

**BubblesDoujinshi: Um...thank you! I think.**

**Right. I own nothing! Not Harry Potter, not Naruto, not the hairtie I've got in (it's my sister's). Speaking of Harry Potter, I dedicate this one to J. K. Rowling, because from here until at least the middle of Part Two, there are gonna be a lot of things that are a lot like the Goblet of Fire for all sorts o' reasons, the main one being...well...GoF's brilliant? Idk. This A/N is long. Imma shut up now.**

* * *

"Tenny, how can you be awake at this ungodly hour?"

Ino flopped over the foot of her bed and stared at her friend from behind her tangled curtain of hair. Tenten was standing in the doorway to the bathroom with her back to the blonde as she snapped elastics around her buns and repeatedly brushed at the knees of her seemingly new stark-white tights and the hem of her equally spick-and-span inky black tunic. Ino doubted there could possibly still be dust on her clothing, but maybe it was a form of stress relief.

"Ungodly hour?" Tenten echoed, turning around to face the blonde and lean against the doorframe. "It's nine in the morning. The next task starts in twenty minutes, and breakfast is over in five. You should prolly eat something—you skipped dinner yesterday, and didn't have much lunch."

"I'll just take some toast out to the bleachers," sighed Ino as the events of the previous day came flooding back to her and she bit back a sob. Then she recomposed herself, her old perky smile back in place as she piled her hair on top of her head in a sloppy excuse for a bun. "So..what is the task?"

"Some kind of rescuing-slash-killing people thing; that's all we were told yesterday." Tenten shoved her feet into her sandals and started towards the door. "You coming?" she asked.

"Sure." Ino pushed herself up into a standing position and walked over to Tenten. "Where are you going?"

"Technically, I'm off to Sarutobi's office, but we can make a stop at the cafeteria, if you want."

Ino said she did want that (even though she didn't, really) and the two of them stepped out into the hallway, the blonde occasionally bumping into the wall or tripping over her own bare feet as she aimlessly, absentmindedly followed her friend and the brunette heaving a lot of sighs and rolling her eyes so much a part of Ino wondered if they'd get all twisted up or something. There was a handful of people whose heads turned as the pair walked by (Ino was sure they looked rather odd) but nobody, not even Hinata or Sakura, said a word. Which was weird—Konoha hallways were always alive with chitchat and yells; it was like their _thing_. Ino decided to put it down to the fact that it was time for task two and everyone was just anxious; but as she stared into the eyes of every gawker from underneath her long eyelashes, trying to figure out why they'd all gone mute, she found she was nearly certain that word about her father had gotten out and that her fellow ninja were waiting for her to crack (since they were nice like that).

"Yeahnyway," she muttered to herself, "time to move on."

* * *

"Hey, Ten."

Tenten's head snapped up. It was the first time Neji had ever used her nickname, and it seemed so wildly out of character for him that even given the circumstances she simply never expected to hear him say it. Hell, she didn't think he knew she _had_ a nickname.

"Hi, Neji," she said nonetheless. "Looking forward to the next task?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Can't really say until we get the rest of the details, right?"

"I suppose not." She gripped the hem of her shirt and fidgeted with the fabric. "Oh, gods. What if we lose?"

"We're not gonna lose." Neji smiled at her. "Okay?"

"Fine," she said, stepping into line behind Emiko the whiny-ass brat from Suna as Sarutobi opened his door and beckoned the young delegations of the five great ninja academies into his office with a "Single file, please."

"That's the spirit," Neji muttered to her as the two of them rushed to sit on one of the two couches in the room (because all of the office's other seats were a cold, hard plastic and not even ninja liked to sit on cold, hard plastic).

"Good morning, students," said Hiruzen Sarutobi, "and welcome. Now, I hate to be blunt, but let us cut to the chase, for we haven't much time.

"As we said yesterday, the second task of the tournament is simple. Each team has selected two members to compete in a sort of race, where you have an hour to rescue someone important and get back to the starting line, whilst defending yourselves other teams and clearing various obstacles along the way.

"However, in order to prevent anyone from becoming conveniently sick before the task, or perhaps spending the night coming up with a way to cheat, yesterday, we neglected to mention a few things.

"The first is that the race will take place under the lake on the grounds-"

"What about breathing, un?" demanded Ino's doppelgänger from Iwa.

"That's part of the challenge, Deidara," said the principal with a slight smile. "Now, as I was saying, it all takes place underwater, which is to test your stamina, wit, and ability to think on your feet. The second thing we avoided mentioning is that the important someone is one of _you_. Each team will choose one member to be sedated and placed under the custody of the water nymphs living under the lake, and the conscious shinobi or kunoichi will have to successfully free their comrade and fend off the nymphs, in addition to beating the other teams to the goal, not drowning, and all the other obstacles in order to win. Any questions?"

"This sounds stupid," the red-haired boy from Suna (Tenten was nearly certain he was named Gaara or something along those lines) said without a second's hesitation.

"Oh my _Lord_, Gaara," groaned his teammate Emiko. "You can't just go around saying things like that! Like, _hello_, it's called etiquette. And as far as I remember, you were quite well-versed in it."

"I can say whatever I want. We're in a free country-"

Emiko slapped her hand over his mouth and stared at him almost expectantly, not flinching when the small boy shot her a murderous glare in return. "Anyone else?" she asked in an overly cheerful tone, smiling broadly.

"What happens if one of us dies?" asked the busty blonde from Kumo, flipping her glossy bob and arching an eyebrow. Her teammate, a dark-skinned, sullen-looking redhead, nodded at the question and added, "Yeah, will that get us disqualified?"

"Staff members and some of the judges will be keeping a close eye on all of you, just like on your little trip to town a few days ago. So if we find that one of you is in danger with no help available, someone will go out and get you. It will get you disqualified from the task, mainly for safety reasons, but not from the competition. Does that answer your questions, Samui, Karui?"

They nodded and a petite student (who Tenten knew was one of the male members of Team Kiri but still found rather androgynous) from Kiri asked, "How will the drugs work?"

"If all goes well, they'll knock you out as soon as we hand you over to the nymphs, and when the drugged ninja comes in contact with their designated rescuer's chakra, which we'll be taking samples of via blood test in just a few minutes, they'll probably wake up. There's a ninety-nine percent chance they'll wake up." When nobody else said anything, Sarutobi went on, "You will all have five minutes to choose who will be drugged and who will rescue them. Follow me, please." He showed the students to a group of makeshift back rooms, one for each team, and locked the doors behind them, with a "This way, none of you will be able to overhear the other teams" by way of goodbye.

"So..." said Tenten after a moment, "do you wanna take the pill of doom or should I?"

"Wait," Neji replied, and put his ear to the wall. "These things must've been built in a rush—they're hollow. So we should be able to eavesdrop on teams next to us anyway." He gestured to the wall opposite the two of them. "That's Suna's, you can listen to them."

_Neji was right, _thought Tenten as she pressed her head against the wall and voices began to float through the thin plaster. _These walls are crap._

"...you," Tenten heard Gaara say.

"What? No! I can be drugged. You can do all the hard stuff. Like, do you really think I can use _snow_ powers underwater?" At this Emiko Yuki began to snicker uncontrollably. "Come _on_. Just..._no_!"

"Please, snow's better than sand. Besides, you're a better swimmer. _And_ I don't really feel like doing all that extra work."

"Like I do?"

"Do you _want_ me to get angry, Yuki?"

"I'm not scared of you, Gaara no Sabaku."

"Fine. I'm taking the drug anyway." With that, there was a sound of the door opening and someone stomping out, followed by a decidedly feminine groan.

"Team Suna is drugging Gaara," Tenten announced with a shrug. "Don't know why that's important, but-"

"Knowledge is power," Neji tersely said. "And Team Kumo is drugging the blonde girl, Samui. Apparently the other one's a really fast swimmer or something, so whoever we send to rescue the other guy has gotta be faster if we wanna win this thing."

"It should probably be you, then," said Tenten. "I've never been very fast, and besides, if people start attacking, I don't think I'll be able to throw any weapons very well underwater."

Neji nodded and inexplicably wrapped his arms around her in an awkward hug. "Okay. Good luck, Ten."

"Right back at you, Neji," she mumbled, blushing faintly and picking up the forehead protectors left out for the two of them. "Shall we?"

"Yeah."

"Oh gods, this is gonna suck."

* * *

Neji glanced up at the overcast sky and almost turned to Tenten with a witty remark about the weather (which he kept in his pocket like other teens kept shuriken or candy wrappers), but saved himself from talking to thin air and looking like an idiot in the nick of time. He bit his tongue for several minutes until he bumped into Ino, one of the few people he knew he actually tolerated talking to. She gave him a faint smile as the two of them sat down on a bench, but there was a sad, faraway look in her cornflower blue eyes. Neji noted that the blonde seemed to be in a sort of trance, what with the look on her face and her plaintive voice and the fact she was wearing the exact same clothes as she had the previous day. He made a mental note to ask Tenten what was wrong with their friend.

"The lake, huh?" Ino asked softly. "Can't be a good idea in this weather. It looks like it's gonna rain."

"That's what I was thinking." Neji sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Hey, are you-"

"Even if there's no lightning, it'll be colder, right?" Ino seemed to pointedly avoiding the question of "Are you okay?", which gave Neji an inkling of what the answer might have been. "And there might be rain demons."

"Rain demons?" he echoed incredulously.

Ino nodded. "I'm sure they exist. It wouldn't be Konoha without them, right?"

"I suppose not." The two sat in silence for a moment, until Ino stood up and turned towards the bleachers, with a "You'd better get going—wouldn't want to miss the task, right?" and another sad smile.

"Yeah." He bid her goodbye and strode off to the four conscious delegations from the other academies, who all seemed to be seeing the lake in all its glory for the very first time. The vast expanse of dark water churned rapidly and icy wind was blowing off it in sheets. On the horizon, the sharp triangles of shark fins broke the surface and began to ever so slowly grow larger as they moved towards the shore; and the lake's resident giant monster squids raised the occasional barbed tentacle in a sort of greeting. Or in announcement that "It was nice knowing you all, but now you are going to die. Ta ta!"

Neji could never be sure.

His throat was dry as he stepped on to his diving platform. He still didn't know how he'd go about breathing underwater, and the stress of winning and finding Tenten before she drowned or anything was overwhelming. In the background, Anko was announcing the task and instructing Sakura and Sasuke (who Neji didn't think he liked much anymore) to stop making out when important things were going on; but it was all white noise in his ears. Curling his toes inside his sandals, he took a deep breath and let it out after a count of four, trying to stop his head from spinning (and failing rather miserably). He could feel the tension in the air, the anxiety bubbling up in his opponents as they readied themselves for the task. Worried glances were casted over shoulders and countless nails were bitten as Anko and the audience counted down till the start of the task.

And then they were at zero.

_Sploosh._

The first thing to register in Neji's brain was the cold. He thought he was prepared—after all, he'd lived in the Land of Fire and had been swimming in similar waters his whole life. But there was still that moment of shock when he entered the water, when thought went out the window and instincts took over and his brain was yelling at him that the cold and the dark and the sheer _wetness_ of it all was wrong, wrong, wrong, that he had to get out tight then, right there.

But he pressed on, ignoring his brain, instead activating his _byakugan_ and taking note on how the other contestants were holding their breath. A brunette from Iwa had seemingly transformed herself into a mermaid, which wasn't very helpful for Neji, and the sullen redhead from Kumo was treading water as she drank some kind of potion and slits appeared on her neck (they must have been gills). Neji was pretty sure he was better off following the technique of Suna's Emiko and Kiri's small androgynous boy, who were both forcing copious amounts of wind chakra to form bubbles of oxygen around their heads, only Neji figured out just in time that he didn't have wind release chakra. His lungs were beginning to burn—he'd been underwater, swimming after the crowd, for nearly seven minutes—and his thoughts were dulling. Desperate, addled, and slightly bored, he began using the chakra he did have to form a sort of second skin, which was probably the best decision he'd made all day: not only did the skin save him the troubles of not breathing, because chakra was nice like that, it protected him from the elements and even casted a faint glow on the objects and people around him, which would almost definitely be useful when he was mucking about on the lakefloor in search of Tenten.

It took Neji a good twenty minutes to reach the lakefloor, due to an unfortunate, bloody kelpie run-in and an untimely scuffle with the brunette from Iwa. By that time, the Kumo girls were steadily making their way to the surface and surefire victory, and the Suna delegations, bloody and bruised though they were, were making haste towards dry land as well.

"Damn those nymphs," Neji heard Emiko mutter as she and Gaara darted past. "Damn them all."

The statement didn't exactly fill Neji with happiness and sunshine.

But he pressed on, and he soon found the lair of the nymphs (which was hard to miss, given the flourescent green glow of its vibrantly colored coral walls). A single conscious guard stood at the abalone gate, one of her beady fish eyes swollen shut and her slimy gray skin covered in little nicks and cuts, like someone had started slashing at her with their senbon.

Pitiful though her appearance was, Neji knocked her out quickly and moved on through the gate. It was locked, but little nymph hands used little nymph locks and it turned out to be rather easy to break the locks and step inside. Emiko's curses suddenly made sense to the young Hyūga prodigy—the compound was littered with nymphs; piles of unconscious (or maybe even dead) ones and lines of angry, decidedly living, ones, armed to the teeth with squid-barb swords and shark tooth spears.

The army and Neji charged at each other at the same time, the nymphs slashing and hacking and throwing things with surprising accuracy for being underwater (had she been awake, Neji was sure Tenten would have been impressed) and Neji forcing more and more chakra through his tenketsu for his _Hakkeshō Kaiten_, seriously hoping that he wouldn't get in trouble with Lord Hiashi for using the main branch jutsu. However, the thought flew out of his head when he spotted Tenten asleep and chained to a rock with her hair loose and floating around her head (Neji had to fight down thoughts of how _Damn, she looks amazing _as he swam towards her). He stood in front of her for a moment, twisting his head to look back at the grounds of the lair to make sure the nymphs were all gone, and began to poke his teammate, trying to activate the chakra-reactor-wake-up thing in the drug so the two brunettes could get the hell out. He tried everything as the minutes went by, poking her, prodding her, pinching her, pulling her hair and pushing her back and forth. Nothing. Finally he sighed, snapped her little-nymph-hand chains, and began dragging her off—he didn't have the time to stand about and wait.

Of course, once they were out of the prison she stirred, her eyes snapping open and her face rapidly turning blue. _Chakra, _Neji wrote in front of him with his finger, _use your chakra as armor or something._

Tenten's chakra skin was more of a bubble. Neji chose not to point that out.

* * *

It didn't take Team Konoha long to reach the surface, which Tenten noted Neji looked relieved about. He looked less relieved when the screaming began.

Tenten supposed that if the problem (and the screamer) weren't twenty feet away from them, neither teen would have cared. But, alas, twenty feet in front of them sat a gaint monster squid (Tenten had heard countless legends about the gargantuan cephalopods, none of which had a particularly happy ending) with Emiko Yuki wrapped in one of its tentacles, poised above its gaping maw as she thrashed about to the best of her ability.

"LET GO OF ME!" she shrieked. "LET GO OF ME _RIGHT NOW_!"

Gaara, who (from what Tenten gathered) was sitting about, doing nothing, blinked and asked, "Should I do anything, Emiko?"

She whipped her head towards Gaara, and Tenten saw her eyes were wide with fear and her face was pale as she said, "Go," in a strangled voice. "Just go. If one of us makes it to shore, maybe we'll still get points."

Tenten was appalled that the Suna boy didn't even hesitate before a platform of sand and silt floated up from the bottom of the lake and he set off riding it towards the shore; nonetheless, she gave Neji a small nod and concentrated her chakra in her feet, running and jumping onto one of the squid's tentacles and pounding on it with her fists. "Come on, Neji," she called, "gimme a hand!"

The Hyūga stared at her blankly. "How am I supposed to help you? I can't walk on wat-"

"Chakra in feet," Tenten said, not even looking at him (instead yanking small, loose barbs out of the squid's suckers and throwing them towards the beast's eyes like kunai). "Just like tree-climbing! Now, get to it!"

And so he did, and the two fought like madpeople for what felt like eternities. Eventually the squid dropped Emiko Yuki, and Tenten made a mental note to never get on the girl's bad side as she spun and froze the tentacle she was standing on with a light stomp of her foot, then began creating sheets of snow and bringing them crashing down on the squid's head. The three of them fell into a steady rhythm of Emiko pelting the cephalopod with snow, Tenten slashing at its features with a newfound larger barb, and Neji beating the crap out of the squid's eye (and making Tenten rather nauseous as blood and guts flew everywhere). They stained the water ultramarine with squid blood and yet the monster fought on, determined to eat at least one of them.

"Run," panted Neji eventually. "We can't beat it."

Tenten and Emiko glanced at each other and at the squid, whose brains seemed to be starting to leak out of its massive head. "Roger," they both muttered, turning towards the Hyūga and the three of them fled the scene, though none of them were having a particularly easy time with it—Tenten was dizzy with exhaustion, from both the fight and the pill; Emiko Yuki was covered in scrapes and every time her hand brushed her side, it came away bloody; and Neji's left arm, which he seemed to be purposefully keeping still, was hanging at a funny angle. But they soldiered on. On and on and on and on.

Tenten knew that the task had started at nine thirty AM, precisely and exactly. When they finally reached the shore, the sun was at its peak. So if it'd taken Neji the hour allotted to find her, Tenten reckoned they'd spent at least an hour fighting the squid.

And by the looks on the audience's and the judges' faces, Tenten didn't think they were supposed to spend an hour fighting squid.

"Miss Yuki! Miss Zhang! Mr. Hyūga! What in the world happened?" demanded Yagura, the principal of the Kiri school. His purple eyes were narrow and the flush on his face was a matching color.

"Squid," said Emiko, and then shut up (which Tenten didn't think she even knew how to do).

"Right," said Hiashi Hyūga, "let's start with the evaluation of teams Suna and Konoha, no? Ōnoki, would you like to start?"

The wizened old principal of the Iwa school steepled his fingers. "We can start with Suna, since they were technically here first. And they sucked more. Six."

Suna's principal grimaced. "Eight, Emiko, Gaara."

"Seven," said Yagura with a shrug.

Tsunade, who was clutching a bottle of whiskey this time, slurred, "Niiiiiine."

"Ten," sighed A, the principal of the Kumo Institute. "You two are incredibly strong ninja. Good at killing things."

"Five!" Neji's uncle crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. "You were so violent!"

"Seven," said Sarutobi. "I've got mixed feelings about your performance."

"Right, then, Suna, you've been awarded fifty-two points, meaning as of now, you have a score of one hundred and nine, placing you in second place," said A. "Ōnoki, start with the evaluation of Team Konoha, if you will."

Ōnoki sat up straighter, throwing his green cloak over his bony shoulders and thrusting out his flak jacket. "_Team Konoha_," he jeered. "The eternal do-gooders."

Tenten's face flushed.

"Five," Ōnoki went on. "Because when the enemy is dying, you let them die, dammit."

The auburn-haired headmaster of the Suna Academy placed his head in his hands. "I give you a nine, Konoha," he said. "Just because I feel sorry for you."

Shrugging again and heaving a sigh, Yagura said, "I actually think you were good, Konoha. Nine."

"TEN!" Tsunade waved her bottle around in the air, the brownish liquid sloshing out and staining her coat. "Long-fabulous-hair-boy, girl-with-funny-hair-donuts, you two are my OTP!"

Tenten wasn't entirely sure what an OTP was, but was gleeful nonetheless with their extraordinarily high marks so far. She grinned at Neji and Ino, who was ever-so-sneakily tiptoeing up to them with a wide smile gracing her face.

"Seven," said A. "Not too violent, but Mr. Hyūga, nice use of that spinning technique to defeat the nymphs."

Hiashi pressed his lips together and stared pointedly at the sand. "Four."

"Ten," countered Sarutobi. "Not everybody would stand up to help a stranger, and qualities like that are important in a ninja."

"That brings you up to fifty-four points, Team Konoha," said Yagura. "Adding that to last task's sixty points, you now have one hundred and fourteen points, placing _you_ in second place." Yagura went on like that, announcing statistics and such, but he was mostly talking to the crowd as Tenten, Emiko, and Neji were whisked off on stretchers and Ino, hands to her mouth, followed them.

Tenten fell asleep shortly after that—after all, she'd just been drugged, nearly drowned, and battled a monster squid and made its brains go everywhere. But in her last few minutes of coherent thought, she managed a smile. She was really doing well on Team Konoha, she realized. And she felt more at home than she ever had.

* * *

**END OF PART ONE**

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."  
_― Maya Angelou_

* * *

**A/N: Aaaaaand...whelp! That's that!**

**I want to keep this brief, people, but I also want to thank you all so, so much. Really. I know you all have lives and stuff, but you put the time down to read this anyway, and you've stuck with me, even through my complaints and quirks and drama. And it's really all thanks to all of you that _A Song of Steel and Lies _is my longest-ever, longest-running story, and unlike most stories, I haven't thought about deleting it or anything even once.**

**So thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you all one heck of a lot.**


	14. XIV

**A/N: Hi, guys. Miss me? No, I didn't think so.**

**Guest: OMGGM THANK YOU!**

**Aww I'm so sorry! I just can't write romance all the time 'cos the story'd get dull. But SasuIno should happen mid-Part Two or so, so keep calm, carry on, and in the mean time there's Tsunade. ;)**

**Purpleprincess1147: YOSH! Gather 'round, haters of Sakura Haruno, and we will form an army to destroy SasuSaku forever!**

**And merci beaucoup.**

**Quoq: Aah! So many letters!**

**But yep, and why, thank you. I hate how all my creativity's taken a nosedive, but at least I haven't botched things too horribly, right?**

**misspandalily: I knoooow. It suuuuucks. And like I said in that PM, I have come up with non-****GoF task ideas for tasks three, four, and five, and...yeah. Thank you for believing in me and my nonexistent creativity, though! Even though I certainly don't believe ASOSAL has potential, I'll do my best to fix things!**

**And thank you very much. I'm sure it's a lie but thanks anyway.**

**Okeydoke, people, I'm bored with disclaiming, so I'll leave this one up to you. Aaaaaand...sheesh, who should I dedicate this one to? Um...YOU! THIS IS FOR YOU, WHOEVER'S READING THIS!**

**PS: I did another timeskip and now it's mid-November in the story. Um...yeah. I didn't want several chapters of nothing.**

* * *

**PART TWO**

**SUPERNOVA**

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for."  
_― Bob Marley_

* * *

Ino yawned as she stumbled down the flagstone path to the training grounds. When she'd woken up, she was positively giddy about the fact that she'd gotten a full six hours of sleep (which beat her personal record by thirty minutes); but just like always, the more sleep she got, the more sleep she wanted, and so her eyelids were heavy as she shoved Sasuke out of her way and skipped over to Tenten and Neji as they sat on their log and discussed whatever it was that Tenten and Neji discussed.

It almost hurt Ino to see her two friends laughing airily and smiling in the way they only did around each other. She felt like the only one who could see they were trapped in their maddening limbo of unwitting flirting and then insisting they were merely friends and ultimately not going out. Ever.

If anything, it annoyed her to no end. Ino had their best interests at heart; she really did. But she didn't dare meddle in fear she'd ruin her friendship with either of them. So she had to settle with sitting and silently urging them to kiss and rolling her eyes when they didn't.

Shoving those thoughts aside, the petite Yamanaka hiked her tunic up so she wouldn't get it wet and sat down next to Tenten on the log. To her dismay, the cold autumn damp seeped through her sweats instead and she was suddenly grateful for the length of her shirt—she probably looked like she'd wet her pants.

"Mornin', Ino," chirped Tenten, with a nod from Neji.

"Nighty night," said Ino, flopping her head forwards and closing her eyes. Tenten flicked her.

"Ino Yamanaka," she said in a mock-reprimanding tone, "when someone says good morning, it is common etiquette to not fall asleep. Understood?"

"No," Ino mumbled, giving Tenten a halfhearted shove and giving Sasuke Uchiha a real one as he tried to sit down next to her. A part of her, the part that still loved him despite everything, felt bad as he landed on the crunchy dead grass and the cold hard dirt, but the rest of her didn't care. He should have been happy, in her opinion, that nobody had murdered him yet.

The minutes ticked by slowly, and Ino had to say she was rather shocked Gai-sensei hadn't turned up yet. Punctuality was, after all, the most youthful of virtues. And Maito Gai was, after all, incredibly youthful. He said so himself.

And finally an adult-sized shadow passed over the trees in front of the grounds. Ino sat up straighter, preparing some kind of witty retort to toss at their sensei, but bit it back when Kakashi Hatake came strolling out of the woods instead.

"Hello, Team Konoha," he said. "Sorry I'm late."

"Late?" Tenten crossed her arms. "You're not even supposed to be here. _Gai-sensei_, on the other hand, was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago. Where is he?"

"On a mission. I'm your substitute." Kakashi ran his fingers through his silver hair and sat down on a log. "Go on, Team Konoha," he said when the four ninja merely stared at him. "Get to training."

"Well, the thing is," said Sasuke in his dry, sarcastic voice (which Ino used to love so, so much), "we kind of need a sensei to train."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Ino sighed and stared expectantly at Kakashi. "Gai-sensei lets us chew gum while training," she lied smoothly.

"Really? Huh. Okay, chew away, kids." Kakashi didn't look up from his book.

"And we get to leave whenever we want," Sasuke said, throwing the large clock on the tallest of the Institute's towers a wary glance.

"Does that apply to me, too?" asked Kakashi. Tenten clenched her fists and widened her eyes at Ino, her gist clear: _Can you believe this guy!?_

Ino fished around in her pocket and found a stick of bubblegum. She said nothing.

Neither did Kakashi Hatake, so the ninja of Team Konoha slowly stood up and drifted off. Tenten and Neji, upon whom Gai-sensei's crazy training antics seemed to be rubbing off, turned towards the track. Ino began to follow them, but veered off when she saw Sasuke speed-walking down the path towards the school.

"Where are you going at such an ungodly hour?" she asked coldly, easily catching up to him.

"Nowhere."

"Oh, come on, now, Sasuke-kun," she went on, smiling her trademark megawatt smile with malice. "You owe me! Can't you just tell me? Your secret will be safe with me, I promise."

"Go_ away_, Ino." Sasuke jammed his hands in his pockets and began taking ever longer strides down the stones.

"Well, _some_body's on their period." Her voice rang out loud and clear over the eerily silent grounds and was met dramatically, with Tenten loudly clapping her hands over her mouth as she desperately tried not to laugh and Neji snickering away and not bothering to hide it at all. Sasuke, on the other hand, didn't take the comment nearly as well—his (gorgeous) eyes bugged out and his (perfect) jaw dropped, his face the epitome of shock and hurt. Through all the commotion, Ino blushed, barely managing to finish her retort with her murmured, "And it sure as hell ain't me."

"Oh, you little-" Sasuke began, but cut himself off by taking a deep breath in through his nose and letting it out with a shake of his head. "Whatever," he said after a moment, flipping his hair in what Ino supposed was the most masculine way possible and turning on his heel. "Unlike the rest of you, I've got places to be."

"Bye bye, Sasu_gay_," Ino couldn't help but snort, tossing her hair in an imitation of her crush and flouncing off to the fence of the track and perching herself on it, watching a giggly Tenten and a smirking Neji run their laps with a sad smile on her face.

She really needed to stop burning all her bridges, a part of her thought. But it was the part of her that loved Sasuke, the part of her who thought Sakura had a soul. So she ignored it.

It was probably better that way.

* * *

Over the past few weeks, Room 230 on the second floor had become Sasuke's and Sakura's personal hideout. They'd meet up in there between lessons and spend hours holed up in the room on weekends. Nobody knew they were there—they made very sure of that—and the fact that it was all so secret made it all the more romantic.

Sakura had even taken to decorating the place, which Sasuke found cute. She'd taken the little potions off the shelves and lined them with seashells and other knick-knacks instead (and never did mention where she'd put the tiny glass bottles). The once-bare brick walls now boasted a multitude of photos. A rug stolen from one of the seventh years' common rooms lay on the paint-splattered ebony floor.

And she was very, very fond of it all.

"Sasuke-kun!" the green-eyed girl squealed as she spun into the room, planting a kiss on his cheek. "What's up?"

"Not much," he sighed, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. In truth, everything was up: Neji and Tenten, who were actually close friends of his, were giving him the cold shoulder, his love for Sakura felt like it was ever so slowly beginning to dwindle, his grandmother's operation didn't go nearly as well as planned, and...Ino. The blonde and her disdainful, snide comments about how "Suckura Whoreuno" and "Sasugay Doucheiha" should go die in a hole and her bottled-up anger mixed with her sunny disposition and her unfairly amazing smile and her big blue eyes stuck to the back of his mind like gum to a shoe. He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to fix things. But she would clearly rather break his nose.

But Sasuke was either good at hiding his emotions or Sakura wasn't good at picking up on them, for she simply smiled and took his hand with a "Well...ooh! It's almost Yule, isn't it? Only a few weeks, now! Looking forward to it?"

"Sure," lied the Uchiha. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I know, right? I mean, presents and mistletoe and snow..." Sakura's voice trailed off and she stared at the ceiling, her smile growing ever wider. "It's gonna be awesome," she finished.

Sasuke plastered a small smile on his face, though it felt more like a grimace. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Awesome."

* * *

"Tenten!"

"What?"

"I do not understand! How did the ninja of the Yànhuô Highlands invent so much stuff?"

"They're just naturally smart, that's all." Neji watched Tenten bite her lip and kneel down next to Lee, pointing to his book and telling him, "Plus, in Yànhuô, you see, they've always had a history of being more open to the sciences than any other country, especially around that time period. Several dynasties of emperors and empresses threw piles and piles of gold at inventors in hope they'd earn it all back. And even when they didn't, they just hit more money and gave it to the inventors to fund a new project for them. Blah blah. And so it goes on."

"But Tenten," Lee said, eyes wide, "it says that sometimes bad inventors were _executed_!"

The brunette met this with a frown and said, "In the Xià dynasty, yes. But they got over that."

Lee grabbed her arm. "But _Tenten_-"

"Ten!" Neji barked abruptly, stomach in knots as he watched Lee cling to his teammate. "Could you...ah...help me, too?" He didn't need her help, and even if he did one day, he'd never say a word; but anything, he figured, would be better than watching Rock Lee do whatever it was he was doing. So he covered up the pages of his textbook the best he could and looked up at her hopefully. She grinned.

"The almighty Neji Hyūga needs my help? Well, then, I suppose I must help him, no?" Her grin grew wider as she pulled out the chair beside him and nudged his arm aside. "So what don't you understand about the history of the Yànhuô Highlands?"

Neji closed the book on his hand and turned to Tenten. "How could their religions and science coexist like that in the earlier dynasties? Wouldn't things like the firework be deemed, like, the work of the devil?"

"Gee." Tenten leaned back in her seat. "I dunno. Have you checked the book?"

"Yes-" he began, but was cut off by the brunette yanking his book open and loudly saying, "Well, I can't help you, Neji. Your book's all...different! Like it's-"

"Ssh!" hissed the Hyūga, slapping a hand over his teammate's mouth. "Not here, not in front of Lee."

Tenten raised an eyebrow at him. "Whyever not?" she whispered. "I'm just saying that you've got the Designated Dyslexic Book, or whatever you call them here. You know, one of the books with big letters and less information and all that jazz."

Slowly, Neji shut the book again, and leaning in closer to Tenten, he murmured, "Yeah, well, maybe I'm dyslexic."

She was silent for a long, long time after that. He could see the emotions swirling around in her orange-brown eyes and flitting across her face. Shock, pity, disbelief, and then she even flashed the faintest trace of a smile for reasons Neji couldn't fathom. Perhaps she was happy to have found his fatal flaw, he thought, or maybe she suddenly found him silly, like people always did when they found out. She could have been a spy for someone back wherever she came from, searching for information on the Hyūgas, and knowing that he was dyslexic could have meant her mission was complete.

"It's kind of funny," mused Tenten after a while, when Lee had long since left and the bell had long since rang, snapping him out of his reverie. "You and your _byakugan_ can see everything except words. Or something."

Neji smiled softly and began gathering his things together. "Or something indeed."

* * *

Tenten's shoulders were heavy with the weight of Neji's secret as she walked down the stairs to the auditorium. _Dyslexic, _she kept thinking. _Neji Hyūga is dyslexic._

She didn't think it was so much the dyslexia that shocked her, but the fact that Neji Hyūga, of all people, was dyslexic. It simply made no sense to her. He was...well...Neji!

Shaking those thoughts aside, she began taking the steps two at a time, barrelling out into the hall and past a group of giggly sixth years and tripping over Naruto in her haste.

"Oh my gosh," she said as she scrambled to her feet and started for the assembly again, "I'm super sorry."

Naruo blinked a few times and finally said, "You're sorry? You're not gonna yell at me to get out of your way or anything?"

Tenten furrowed her eyebrows. "Um...no," she answered warily. "Why would I? It's my fault I fell. But I should get going. Ino's gonna yell at _me_ if I'm late for the assembly."

"Oh, I'm going there too! I'll follow you. I don't know where I'm going." Naruto beamed at her and she smiled back, confused, as the two of them jogged down the endless corridors. She knew Naruto was something of an outsider, but Tenten still didn't think he'd be so desperate for company that he'd talk to _her_, of all people—the last time they'd talked, he'd vowed to kill Neji. As Neji's best friend, it didn't really add up in her mind.

Aside from a few awkward stabs at conversation on Naruto's behalf, the two walked in silence. Tenten noted that people looked at her very differently as she stood beside Naruto: they no longer saw the tall, athletic girl who hid lethal weapons in her hair, who could hit the target dead-center with a kunai from a hundred yards away; they looked at her like she was in mortal peril of some sort, like her escort could flip out and go all crazy-demon-person any second.

_But that's silly,_ she told herself firmly. _If Naruto's a demon, then I'm a redhead. Which I most certainly am not._

The only person who didn't bat an eye at the two of them was Kurenai (albeit a slightly _larger_ Kurenai than the one Tenten remembered), who Tenten only even knew existed because she was the sensei who led Kiba's and Hinata's team and taught Sasuke genjutsu.

"Oh my gosh, Kurenai-sensei!" exclaimed the short blond boy. "You got _fat_!"

"Naruto!" hissed Tenten. "You can't say things like that!"

"It's fine, it's fine," chuckled the dark-haired woman. "Actually, Naruto, it's more like I'm three and a half months pregnant, but you were close enough. Are you two off to the assembly?"

"Yes ma'am," Tenten said through gritted teeth, trying to glare at Naruto as inconspicuously as humanly possible, still appalled that he would straight-out call a teacher fat.

"How nice. I hear Anko has some important things to announce."

"When doesn't she?" Tenten grinned ruefully, beginning to take longer strides as the doors to the auditorium finally came into view. "Well, congratulations, Kurenai-sensei. See you around."

Though it left a lump in her throat, Tenten ditched Naruto as soon as she stepped into the crowded auditorium, sauntering over to Ino and sliding into a seat next to her, not leaving room for anyone else as she did so. Ino was all smiles and sunshine as she and the brunette struck up a conversation about the dresses of the season and how one could theoretically make them more suitable for the needs of an active kunoichi. Tenten knew the blonde had noticed all the worried glances she cast over her shoulder, but she said nothing.

Finally, Anko gallivanted on to the stage, tapped the microphone, and announced (with all the theatricality of a peacock, as usual), "Welcome, welcome, welcome! Not really, I don't want you guys here. Anyway, third years, kids-older-than-third years, and kids from other countries, good afternoon. For those of you who don't know, I'm Anko Mitarashi and I'm here to bring you all some important news, so listen up!" She smiled wickedly at the chatter that bubbled up in the audience, clearly enjoying all the attention she was receiving. "As you all know," the young woman said, pacing back and forth across the stage, "every country in the Yōso Alliance has a major celebration that takes place in the winter. Here in the Land of Fire we have Yule, in Water you have the MidWinter Feast, and so on, and so forth. To honor this, the other staff, principals, and I have put our heads together to come up with a sort of celebration. We're going to hold..." Anko paused for effect, and the mutterings of the students assembled grew louder as they all leaned forward in their seats, waiting to hear about the (probable) celebration.

"...a ball," finished Anko with a smirk, crossing her arms and cocking a hip. The evil look in her eyes suppressed the screams and squeals of the student body just enough to avoid causing possible deafness for anyone, but only just enough. Tenten clapped her hands over her ears and shrunk in her seat.

"Oh, yes, children, I know I'm wonderful," Anko said gaily, dismissing the hullabaloo with an airy wave of her hand. "But save the praise for next May, if you could. That should give you enough time to buy me presents. Now, off with you all! Only not you, delegation people, you twenty should stick around. Don't worry, I'm sure that your crushes will wait five minutes for the lot of you to ask them out."

A hush fell over the representatives of the five schools when their schoolmates filed out. Twenty pairs of eyes followed Anko Mitarashi as she unplugged her mic and left to put it backstage. Twenty pairs of eyes skipped across the heads of the ninja around them as Anko stood and counted them before going backstage again. And twenty hands shot into the air like rockets when the sensei asked if they had any questions, which they all so clearly did.

The dark-haired woman ignored them all. "I suppose you're all wondering why you're still here. After all, I'm incredibly nice, am I not? Why wouldn't I let you all run free and do whatever it is you small children do?

"The answer is simple, and for once in my life, it's not 'because reasons.' Nope, I'm here to explain the third task of the tournament to you all.

"Unlike the previous two tasks, where you were all graded on killing things, this task is about finesse, secrecy, and the subtle art of stealing. It's a sort of scavenger hunt, if you will, where different items hidden throughout the ball are worth different amounts of points. There are things like forks, which are worth only one point or so, and things like diamond rings on the hands of your classmates, which are worth around thirty. There will even be an item worth a full seventy points.

"But you can't let anyone see anything. Anyone at all. Which means, small children, that you will have to be dancing and socializing and hiding everything you do from everyone you see. Doesn't that sound fun?"

Nobody said a word, so Anko rolled her eyes and dismissed them all; the young ninja fell into an automatic single file and trickled out the double oak doors, being neatly deposited into the throng of people gathered around the auditorium's entrance. Ears were jerked away from the wall and the doors and questions and exclamations began flying out of the crowd like fireworks on Independence Day: "Will you go with me to the dance?" "Don't go with him! Go with me!" "U-um...d'you...w-wanna go to the ball w-with me?" "OH MY GOSH YOU NEED TO TAKE ME!" "Oh my gosh _no_."

And the word was out of Tenten's mouth before she even knew it; it made her blush a furious beet red and want to curl up in a ball on the floor and die and she knew that she would never, ever hear the end of it. "Neji!"

* * *

**A/N: Yes! Part Two exists! Please, dear readers, review its existence!**


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